
J)teamet ox 






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Gass 

Book ^_ 



COPiWCOT DEPosrr. 



A DREAMER OF DREAMS 



BOOKS BY DR. HUCBJIL 



A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

A new and intimate telling of the love-story and life- 
work of •' Will Penn the Quaker." (Illustrated, cloth, 
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THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 

A new and striking study of Tennyson by a pil- 
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MENTAL MEDICINE 

Some practical suggestions for everyday health, "being 
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Twelve volumes of new translation and interpretation 
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RHINE GOLD, THE VALKYRIE, SIEGFRIED, THE 
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cents; dark green leather, $1.25.) 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 




Engraved after tlie I' 



'The Portrait in Armor." 

iting in the Historical Society of Peunsylvai 



A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

BEING A NEW AND INTI- 
MATE TELLING OF THE LOVE- 
STORY AND LIFE-WORK OF 
''WILL PENN THE QUAKER." 



BY 

OLIVER HUCKEL 



An authentic narrative, freely arranged 
from the supposed journal of the fair Gull 
Springett, as found in an old oaken chest 
at Worminghurst, England. 

Also somewhat added by Letitia Penn, 
Never before thus set forth in print. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



■Hs-f 



Copyright, 1916, by 
Oliver Huckel 

Printed in the United States of A ?n erica 



OCT 25 1916 



Ci.A4453^ii 



TO 

ANN EDWARDS 

AND 

REBECCA MING: 



MY QUAKER GRANDMOTHERS 

Like two little doves in gray 

On the boughs of a greenwood tree, 

My two Quaker grandmothers sit 
In my gay geneology. 

The Cavalier struts in my heart, 

The Puritan tugs at my will, 
But the Quaker faces say Peace, 

And passion and pride are still. 

Dear faces of infinite calm, 

Ye have wrought a spell in my blood 
That maketh the world seem wise 

And sweet with the sunshine of God. 

O. H. 



FOREWORD 

What could an old journal found in an oaken 
chest at Worminghurst in England reveal to us^ 
Could it make the past live? Could it bring 
us into a new appreciation of the lovely character 
of the fair Guli Springett who has been to so many 
of us only a name*? Could it make us see the 
troubles and triumphs of Will Penn the Quaker 
in a new and human light, — so that we should 
feel that it was all worth while, — and glorious? 

Look, then, into the pages of this journal, — 
fragmentary as it is. The pageantry of a great 
period of English history passes before us, and 
on the foreground two of the noblest of God's 
creations. We are again thankful for this brave 
new world that hath such goodly people in it. 

Do you care whether it be veritable in every 
smallest particular? The great facts are there 
and all the world knows them. But the coloring, 
the human touches, the glintings of light, the 
fleeting smiles, — who is responsible for these chron- 
icles of the passing mood but Life itself. 



FOREWORD 

My own heart has found a great joy in these 
pages, — and so I share them with you. I would 
feel craven to keep them to myself, — they do not 
belong to me, nor to the Quakers alone, — they are 
a part of the treasure of humanity, — the incom- 
parable records of human faith and divine daring. 
They are yours, — if you will. 

Has the dust been gathering in the old chest for 
more than two hundred years? Is the paper yel- 
low and the ink faded? Love never dies. The 
chronicle is as sweet to-day as the day on which 
it was written, — the fragrance of the roses still 
lingers around the ancient packet of devotion. I 
only open the pages for you, — the characters of 
the drama of Life walk out to you, — for they 
are real, authentic, historic. Their blood still 
lives, their memory is still cherished in the hearts 
of kinsmen and lovers, their tender faith and un- 
dying hope still make luminous the pathway of 
the ages. 

We have had biographies and histories galore. 
But we have not yet had enough of the fine wine 
of love, and the thrillings and throbbings of the 
exultant life. Better than any book is Life itself. 
Here it is, and as we shall close the pages at last, 
rriay we not say, "Thank God for human hearts!" 



CONTENTS 



Foreword . . . . 
List of Illustrations 
Introduction . 



CHAPTER 
I 

II 

III 

IV 

V 

VI 

VII 

VIII 

IX 

X 

XI 

XII 

XIII 

XIV 

XV 

XVI 

XVII 



The Grange at Chalfont 

The Coming of Will Penn 

The Vision at Wanstead . 

The Course of True Love 

A Quaker Wedding . 

The New Arcadia . 

The Pleasant Days at Worminghurst 

The Visit to the Princess Elizabeth 

For Liberty of Conscience . 

The Holy Experiment . 

The Sylvan Country . 

Farewell to England . 

The Voyage of the Welcome 

The Treaty Under the Elm . 

The City of Brotherly Love 

Our Manor of Pennsbury . 

Called Back to England . 



PAGE 

vii 

xi 

xiii 

1 

13 

32 
39 
50 
68 

84 

91 
105 
114 
124 
136 
146 
156 
164 
169 
173 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 




page 


XVIII 


A Quaker at the King's Court . 


181 


XIX 


The Bursting of the Storm . . . 


195 


XX 


Manifold Bereavements .... 


210 


XXI 


America Once More 


217 


XXII 


New Days and New Ways . 


223 


XXIII 


The Pathos and Glory of the Dream 


. 231 



Postscript 246 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Armor Portrait of William Penn, taken at 

the age of twenty-two Frontispiece 

(Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Society of New 
York City.) 

PAGE 

GuLiELMA Maria Springett, Penn's First Wife 29 
(From an old stipple engraving, the only extant 
portrait of her.) 

Marriage Room of William Penn at King's 

Farm, Chorley Wood 85 

(A recent photograph, courtesy of the Pennsylva- 
nia Society of New York City.) 

Admiral Sir William Penn 125 

(From the painting by Sir Peter Lely.) 

A Group of Penn's Grandchildren . . . .185 
(From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.) 

The Ancient Friends' Burial Ground at 

Jordan's, Where Penn is Buried . . . 243 
(A recent photograph, courtesy of the Pennsyl- 
vania Society of New York City.) 



INTRODUCTION 

This journal of a romantic life, which I have 
the pleasure of presenting to the reader, will give, 
I hope, a new view of a character well worthy of 
grateful remembrance among the world's heroes 
and men of action. It reveals, as perhaps no other 
account of him has yet done, the human side of 
Will Penn the Quaker. The world has grown ac- 
customed to call him "William" Penn in most dig- 
nified and solemn way and has taken for granted 
that it knew him. Yet often, the real man has 
been smothered by his piety and benevolence, 
while the great-hearted, tender, human man, full 
of blessed faults and loving failures and yet withal 
brave and true, has been left undiscovered. It will 
surely be well worth while, if this journal fur- 
nishes us a glimpse of a living, lovable man, and 
indeed a great one, — under the traditional broad- 
brim hat and the plain drab clothes. 

It seems to me that this narrative will confirm 
the pleasant word that Dean Swift writes to Stella 
in 1710, saying that "he met at Mr. Harley's, Will 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

Penn the Quaker," and that they passed a lively 
evening "being exceedingly well entertained by 
one another." It will also confirm, I think, that 
recent sentence in a noble volume on "Our Phila- 
delphia" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, in which 
she wisely says — "I defy anybody to do a little 
thinking while walking through the streets of Phil- 
adelphia and not be led to him, so for eternity has 
he stamped them with his vivid personality — not 
William Penn, the shadowy prig of the school his- 
tory, but William Penn, the man with the level 
head, big ideas and the will to carry them out — 
three things that make for genius." 

This is the view of the man that is coming to 
appreciation in these days. The real William 
Penn, as Mr. Sydney George Fisher said not long 
ago in an excellent biographical sketch of him — 
"though of a very religious turn of mind was es- 
sentially a man of action, restless and enterprising, 
at times a courtier and a politician, who loved 
handsome dress, lived well and lavishly, and al- 
though he undoubtedly kept his faith with the red 
men, Pennsylvania was the torment of his life. 
He came moreover of fighting ancestry and was 
himself a soldier for a short time. His life was 
full of contests, imprisonments and sufferings if 



INTRODUCTION xv 

not of actual fighting and he lived during the most 
critical period of English history." All this I 
have vividly realized as I have been busy with the 
work of editing this journal. In these modern 
days we would call his life an intensely strenuous 
one, and it was lived on a background of English 
history unusually full of interest. This journal 
brings into its midst such fascinating characters 
as Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Locke the 
philosopher, Algernon Sidney, Pepys and Evelyn 
the diarists, such royalties as the merry monarch 
King Charles II, King James II, King William of 
Orange and Queen Mary, and Queen Anne. It 
gives glimpses of Peter the Great of Russia and of 
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. It pictures the 
London of the days of the Great Plague, the Paris 
in the time of Louis the Fourteenth, student days 
at Oxford two hundred and fifty years ago, and 
glimpses of Holland and Germany in that same 
period. It gives quaint glimpses of such famous 
religious characters as George Fox, the apostle of 
the Quakers; Thomas Ellwood, one of their 
scholars; Richard Baxter, the author of 'The 
Saints' Rest"; and Anna Maria Van Schurmann, 
the most learned woman of Europe, the Star of 
Utrecht, in Holland. Besides all this, it tells at 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

first hand and in an intimate way the story of the 
founding of the Quaker province in America, and 
the great fight for religious liberty in England 
which preceded this "holy experiment" in the new 
world. 

Perchance also this journal from the old chest 
at Worminghurst may lead to a fresh interest in 
the people called Quakers and the purpose and 
worth of their testimony to the world. It will 
remind us at least of the picturesque quality of 
their life. Who has written more delightfully of 
the Quakers than Charles Lamb in his "Essays of 
Elia," and how charming is the glimpse that we 
get of Robert Louis Stevenson's interest in the 
matter. Professor Edmund Gosse in a recent in- 
troduction to a new edition of William Penn's 
volume, "Some Fruits of Solitude," tells us how 
warm an admirer Stevenson was of this book. 
He says — "Stevenson met with the little volume 
at a critical moment of his own career in Decem- 
ber, 1879, while he was wandering disconsolately 
in the streets of San Francisco, convalescent after 
a very dangerous illness, yet still 'somewhat of a 
mossy ruin,' and doubtful in what spirit to face 
the world again. To the exile, with his hopes re- 
excited, his spirits grown buoyant, his moral 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

fibers tightened by hardship and fear, the small 
book of Penn's maxims came with what seems a 
direct message from heaven. He was singularly 
moved by the book which he picked up on the 
stall of the San Francisco shop and the depth of 
his emotion was proved by the durability of his 
affection for the volume. Two years afterwards 
he gave that particular copy of the book to Mr. 
Horatio F. Brown with these words — 'If ever in 
all my human conduct I have done a better thing 
to any fellow creature than handing unto you this 
sweet, dignified and wholesome book, I know I 
shall hear of it on the last day. To write a book 
like this were impossible; at least one can hand it 
on with a wrench one to another. My wife cries 
out and my own heart misgives me, but still — here 
it is.' And in a later letter to the same friend 
he says — 'I hope if you get thus far you will know 
what an invaluable present I have made you. 
Even the copy was dear to me, printed in the 
colony that Penn established, and carried in my 
pocket all about the San Francisco streets, read 
in street cars and ferry-boats, when I was sick 
unto death, and found in all times and places a 
peaceful and sweet companion. But I hope, when 
you shall have reached this note, my gift will not 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

have been in vain; for while, just now, we are so 
busy and intelligent, there is not the man living — 
no, nor recently dead — that could put, with so 
lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into 
words.' 

"Stevenson had intended to make this book and 
its author a subject of one of his critical essays. 
In February, 1880, he was preparing to begin it, 
but the sickness unto death of which he speaks in 
the letter above quoted, turned his thoughts in 
other directions; in April of the same year, he is 
still 'waiting for Penn,' but the great changes in 
his fortune and duty, of which we know, immedi- 
ately intervened and carried him off to other lati- 
tudes and other work. He never found the op- 
portunity to discourse to us about the book which 
he loved so much, but it has left an indelible stamp 
on the tenor of his moral writings. The philoso- 
phy of Stevenson as revealed to us from 1879 on- 
wards is tinctured through and through with the 
honest, shrewd and genial maxims of Penn. 
Courage and common sense, a determination to 
win an honorable discharge in the bankrupt busi- 
ness of human life, a cheerfulness in facing re- 
sponsibility, these were qualities which Stevenson 
possessed already, but which he was marvelously 



INTRODUCTION xix 

to strengthen by commerce with 'Some Fruits of 
Solitude.' So the little Quakerish volume has a 
double claim upon us, — for itself so clean and 
sensible and manly a treatise and for its illustrious 
student and sedulous admirer, our admirable Rob- 
ert Louis Stevenson." 

A few words might be said here of the fair Guli 
Springett, the charming young wife of Will Penn 
the Quaker, and of whom this journal is such a new 
revelation. The portrait that we show of her in 
this volume is from a photograph of an old stipple 
engraving long in the possession of the family. 

The miniature from which this stipple engrav- 
ing was taken is said to have been painted during 
Penn's courtship, and shows her as a very attrac- 
tive young woman. All that we learn of her life 
also reveals a rich endowment of domestic virtues 
and strength of character. The letters written by 
her that have been preserved disclose an excellent 
mind and a faithful and loving spirit. She was 
evidently a true companion and worthy helpmeet 
of her eminent husband. 

Her full name was Gulielma Maria Springett. 
She was the daughter of a very gallant young 
Puritan officer. Colonel Sir William Springett 
who died during the siege of Arundel Castle, from 



XX INTRODUCTION 

the reopening of a wound received at Naseby. 
He was the youngest officer of his grade in Crom- 
well's army. Two years after his death the 
widow married Isaac Pennington, son and heir 
of a famous Puritan Alderman in Cromwell's 
time, a member of the High Court of Justice for 
the king's trial, who had left to his son his comfort- 
able estate at Chalfont St. Peters, in Buckingham- 
shire. This son and all the family soon became 
Quakers. 

Perhaps the best description of the fair Guli's 
gifts and graces is given us by Thomas Ellwood, 
John Milton's friend, who lived as tutor at the 
Grange with the Penningtons. He says that she 
was "in all respects a very desirable woman, 
whether regard was to her outward person which 
wanted nothing to render her completely comely 
or to the endowments of her mind which were 
every way extraordinary." A fair fortune would 
also go with her. She had indeed many suitors of 
all ranks and conditions, but, as the excellent Ell- 
wood tells us, "she bore herself with so much even- 
ness of temper, such courteous freedom, guarded 
with the strictest modesty, that none were unduly 
encouraged nor could any complain of offense." 
He also speaks of her innocent, open, free con- 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

versation and of her abundant affability, courte- 
ousness, and the sweetness of her natural temper. 
Her own ancestry and training would doubtless 
breed in her a heroic quality, and also lead her to 
appreciate the heroism in such a character as Wil- 
liam Penn. 

It is related in Gibson's "Life of Penn" that 
Miss Springett had often seen and conversed with 
the great Puritan poet, John Milton, during her 
girlhood days and that she had written sometimes 
from Milton's dictation after he became totally 
blind. 

She was about twenty-five years old when she 
married and as one writer says she had no superior 
among her sex in England for charms of person 
and mind. She was certainly helpful to her hus- 
band in the most trying period of his career and 
he and others bear eloquent tribute to her char- 
acter and gifts. 

What better testimony is there to the warmth of 
his affection and the nobility of his feelings than 
these words: "My dear wife! remember thou 
wast the love of my youth, and much the joy of 
my life; the most beloved, as well as the most 
worthy of all my earthly comforts: and the rea- 
son of that love was more thy inward than thy out- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

ward excellencies, which yet were many — God 
knows, and thou knowest it, I can say it was a 
match of Providence's making; and that God's 
image in us was the first thing, and the most ami- 
able and engaging ornament in our eyes. Now I 
am to leave thee, and that without knowing 
whether I shall ever see thee more in this world, 
take my counsel into thy bosom, and let it dwell 
with thee in my stead while thou livest." She 
was certainly a gifted and remarkable woman, and 
this journal, I think it will be agreed, presents the 
strong and fine qualities of her beautiful character 
in a way in which they have never been presented 
before. We are grateful therefore for a deeper 
acquaintance with a rare nature, and we appreciate 
anew how much she must have meant to William 
Penn. 

Of Letitia Penn, the daughter who completes 
this story, no authentic portrait is extant. She i^ 
described by a contemporary chronicler, the 
Quaker, Thomas Story, as "courteously carriaged 
and sweetly tempered in her conversation among 
us and also a diligent attendant at meetings." 
She is also described as "a large handsome girl 
closely resembling in countenance and complexion 
her father at her own age," that is, about twenty- 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

two, when these words were written. It is gener- 
ally understood therefore that she must have been 
a young woman of rare beauty. Tradition has 
told us that her marriage to William Aubrey 
proved a misfortune, although it was a most ro- 
mantic affair in itself. Aubrey turned out to be 
avaricious, exciting, suspicious, jealous and tyran- 
nical. He became a harsh creditor in dealing with 
her father and an oppressive husband to her. 

Two points I beg my readers to notice. As to 
all the dates in this narrative, I have taken the 
liberty of modernizing them in order to avoid con- 
fusion between the old style and the new style of 
chronology which changed in 1752, long after this 
narrative. According to the old style, March was 
the "first month" in the Quaker calendar, as in the 
usual calendar of that day, and September was the 
seventh month, October the eighth, as their names 
signified. Now, of course, September is ninth 
month. Kindly remember this to save discrep- 
ancy of dates. 

The other point is the frequent use of colloquial 
rather than formal names. In this journal the 
term Quaker is used almost as often as Friend. 
It would seem that the writer had come rather to 
rejoice in that name which at the first had been 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

given in scorn. The journal also uses at times the 
abbreviated Christian names, such as Will, Guli, 
and Lettie. Those who know Penn's own letters 
will remember a similar usage on his part. It was 
always Guli, Tische for Letitia, or Johnny, 
Tommy or Dick. Such familiar speech occasion- 
ally gives a pleasant and informal flavor. 

May I say this concerning the controversial 
subjects avoided. I have considered carefully in 
the course of my readings and investigations in the 
life of Penn, the things that have been said derog- 
atory to him. The several aspersions of Macau- 
lay have been fully refuted by later historians; 
the scandals hinted by Governor Byrd of Virginia 
are now known to be mere gossip of enemies; the 
remarks of Pepys have had their animus ex- 
plained; while the controversies on the boundary 
question, when fully examined and investigated by 
an impartial commission of Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania — as they have been done, — show Penn 
with honor and much judgment on his side. 
Nothing has been really proved against his char- 
acter; and much in his favor by the sifting of 
time and fuller knowledge. So that this narra- 
tive is essentially confirmed even by the latest 
studies of historical evidence. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

I think that those who have read carefully the 
life of William Penn must confess that it is a 
noble but pathetic career. Up to the time of his 
first coming to Pennsylvania, it furnishes many 
dramatic and inspiring episodes and is a wonder- 
ful picture. Penn at twenty-four is a splendid 
figure with a unique record of courage and achieve- 
ment, — an imprisonment in the Tower and three 
remarkable books are his record to that date. 
After this time his life becomes more complicated 
and even pathetic in its mistakes and calamities. 
We feel that if he had only stayed in Pennsyl- 
vania from the time of that first visit how differ- 
ent things might have been, both for himself and 
for his province. We realize that his faith in 
King James II, like his faith in other men, espe- 
cially his agents and deputies, was a strange but 
beautiful delusion. Nevertheless he had a won- 
derful career, he was steadfast and courageous all 
his life long for religious liberty and human rights, 
and his closing years like those of King Lear were 
full of deep pathos, tragical grandeur and yet a 
singular beauty. 

During the generations since the beginning of 
their special testimony, say two hundred and fifty 
years, the Quakers have produced an apostolic 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

succession of noble and devout souls, such as 
Elizabeth Fry, John Bright, John G. Whittier and 
Lucretia Mott, and have done a splendid work in 
the cause of human betterment, especially prison 
reform, the abolition of slavery, and the advocacy 
of peace, but no single member of the society has 
ever done more illustrious work, nor achieved 
greater renown, than William Penn. 

The journal as here given does not appear in its 
diary form with its numerous dates, for mere dia- 
ries oftentimes make tedious reading. I have taken 
the liberty in the editing, to omit many unimpor- 
tant items and to put the connected story in chap- 
ter form with titles. It may thus make an easier 
and pleasanter narrative for the reader. I must 
give the assurance, however, that all the facts 
mentioned in this narrative together with names 
and dates have been carefully collated and veri- 
fied, and may be considered substantially correct. 

Any readers who may desire further light and 
more detailed information concerning many of the 
episodes referred to in this journal, I would refer 
to the five volumes of the select works of William 
Penn which are a valuable confirmation of facts 
herein given; also to the memoirs of the private 
and public life of William Penn compiled by 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

Thomas Clarkson; further, to the account of the 
Penns and the Penningtons by Maria Webb which 
contains many interesting family letters. In ad- 
dition, they may find much in the various biog- 
raphies of Penn by William Hepworth Dixon, 
Samuel M. Janney, John Stoughton, Sydney 
George Fisher, George Hodges and Augustus C. 
Buell. 

May I add this final word : This journal, while 
true to facts, is only partial. It is frank and sin- 
cere, but of course is not always judicial statement 
with evidences pro and con. It is evidently only 
as one loving heart sees it, giving largely the hu- 
man side of a great life from a sympathetic view. 
I have no doubt, that many of the opinions stated 
in this narrative can be debated. But that mat- 
ters not. Sometimes would you rather not hear a 
lover than a. judge? 



A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

CHAPTER I 

THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT 

TWENTY-TWO years old to-day— I can 
scarcely believe it — every day awakening 
more and more to the beauty and glory of life. I 
took a long walk to celebrate my birthday, and my 
friend Thomas Ellwood with me. We passed the 
beautiful quiet shrine of Jordans where our Meet- 
ing House stands, and we loitered for awhile under 
the old trees near our Friends' burial ground. 
Strange how many colored and bright were the 
wild flowers growing there in the abode of quiet 
and somber Friends, and how blithely and merrily 
the birds sang over those who in their lifetime set 
little store by music. 

My journal has been my confidant for years. 
Yesterday ^ I looked it over for the records for 

1 The date of the beginning of this narratve is second 
month loth, 1668. — Editor. 

I 



2 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

nearly ten years past and then hid it deep in my 
father's old secretary. But how many pleasant 
days the reading recalled. There was the day 
when I became fourteen, which was an epoch for 
me, for then my dear mother brought me my 
father's sword — he had died before my eyes saw 
the light — a gallant officer in Cromwell's army — 
and she told me to cherish it in his memory as a 
symbol of the sword of the Spirit. She also 
showed me a beautifully tinted miniature of him, 
very brave and noble. For more than twenty 
years now the good Isaac Pennington has been a 
father to me, tender and loving. We live here at 
the Grange at Chalfont, a pleasant place and a 
dear old vine-covered manor house, not far from 
London and near to the goodly Stoke Pogis church. 
I am a Friend, and so are all my people the Penn- 
ingtons, but these are not easy days for us in Eng- 
land, for to be a Friend means to be called scorn- 
fully a Quaker, and to receive many hard criti- 
cisms. But we believe that we have the truth, 
and we will stand for it. There is another day re- 
corded in my journal when Thomas Ell wood first 
came to be a tutor in the family at the Grange for 
the children and to read in the languages with me. 
That was the beginning of a new period intel- 



THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT 3 

lectual for me, for Thomas Ellwood was a most 
stimulating scholar, and I owe him so much for 
the way he has devoted himself to leading me in 
the classic fields of literature. He is like an elder 
brother to me, and accompanies me in all my 
horseback rides through the country and in all my 
forest journeys in search of new plants and ferns. 
He is seven and twenty, but seems so much older." 
He is also a member of our Society of Friends and 
is the son of a justice of the peace of Oxfordshire 
and a man of excellent parts. I confess that sev- 
eral times the thought has come to me how pleas- 
ant it would be to walk always with such a genial 
soul and splendid scholar. He is most attentive 
and friendly to me. Once I rallied him — "Friend 
Thomas, wilt thou never marry'?" And he looked 
modestly at the ground and answered, "God only 
knows. Already do I care for one toward whom 
all my inclination goeth, but I do not yet dare to 
aspire to her, for she is far above me in station. I 
will be no fortune hunter, yet she is a fortune in 
herself. Sometimes I would speak," he contin- 
ued, "but then my lips are held, for I feel that the 
Lord is reserving her for some one greater." He 
said no more, although I wondered what he really 
meant. 



4 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Another epoch of my life was writ in the old 
journal — near the end — a chance meeting with 
the young hero whose name and fame is now in 
all England, Will Penn the Quaker, who has 
given such a valued testimony for our faith both 
in meeting and in prison. I saw him only for a 
few minutes at the home of a Friend in London 
where I suddenly came in as he was visiting after 
meeting. But I shall never forget him, even if I 
never see him again. His eyes seemed to look 
into my soul. He is a prophet of God. I have 
dreamed of him many times since that meeting. 

But what I must record now in my journal is 
something of the famous scholar and poet, John 
Milton, who has moved into our neighborhood 
and become the chief figure around which our life 
at Chalfont seems to revolve. He is a masterful 
man, a great soul, and his coming among us has 
been to me a wonderful intellectual awakening. 
He is a prodigy of learning, and speaks the ancient 
tongues of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as easily as 
his own. It is said that he careth little for women 
folk, and hath had his own domestic troubles, but 
he has been most kind to me, and already his daugh- 
ter Deborah and I have become most friendly. 

Thus it was that John Milton came to us. It 



THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT 5 

was at Thomas Ell wood's suggestion that he came 
to Chalfont, for he had long been associated with 
the poet to whom he had been introduced by Doc- 
tor Paget, a physician of note in London, through 
the mediation of my step-father Isaac Penning- 
ton. John Milton had already become a gentle- 
man of wide repute for learning through the 
scholarly world. He had filled a great public sta- 
tion in former times, having been Latin Secretary 
to Oliver Cromwell in the days of the Puritan 
Commonwealth, but was now living a private and 
retired life. For he had almost lost the sight of 
his eyes and depended largely on the help of his 
daughters to read and write for him at his dicta- 
tion and also often had a scholar in addition to 
assist him in his work. So that Thomas Ellwood 
and the poet at once formed a genial friendship 
and the young Quaker scholar was accepted as his 
secretary, reading to him certain hours each day 
except First Day at his house in Jewyn Street in 
London. Seated together in the dining-room he 
read to the poet such books in the Latin tongue as 
were desired. Long he continued thus with his 
master both enjoying mutually the converse and 
the studies until the London air grew too heavy for 
Ellwood and he was fain to leave his studies in the 



6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

close city and come to us in the fair country in 
order to preserve life, and soon he was tutor to us 
all in the household of the Grange. 

Now when the great plague came to London 
and every week the number of victims was in- 
creasing, John Milton determined to leave the 
doomed city and to seek refuge in the country. 
He had recourse to his former reader and friend 
Thomas Ellwood to find him out some cozy home 
in the wholesome neighborhood, where he himself 
lived, that he might bring his family hither. So 
with great delight my tutor took for the poet "a 
pretty box," as he called it, or as others might say 
a plain little cottage in Chalfont about a mile 
from us and thither he came and has stayed for 
several years as our honored neighbor. 

Methinks this John Milton is a wonderful man, 
so rich in learning, so opulent in imagination, so 
humble in devotion, so beautiful in person and so 
cheerful and even mirthful in his manners. He 
has had forsooth his share of sorrows and even 
now is under the shadow of great calamity, but he 
keeps his uprightness and magnanimity and is 
deeply absorbed in his heavenly visions. In him 
I believe God has made one of his heroic and 
majestic men. 



THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT 7 

Yet he hath some strange ways. Deborah, his 
daughter, tells me that the other night about one 
of the clock she was roused by hearing her father 
give his three signal taps against the wall. Half 
dressed and with bare feet thrust into slippers she 
hastily ran in to him. He cried — "Deb, for the 
love of Heaven get pen and paper to set something 
down." She answered — "Sure, father, you gave 
me quite a turn, I thought you were ill." But she 
set to her task expecting some crotchet had taken 
him concerning his will. 'Stead of which out 
comes a volley of poetry he had lain a brewing till 
his brain was like to burst and so she in her thin 
night coat must needs jot it all down for fear it 
would ooze away before morning. At length 
with a sigh of relief, he said, "That will do. 
Good night, little maid !" and she crept off to her 
warm bed.^ 

Long ago he engaged my tutor, Thomas Ell- 
wood, to be his reader and scholar in order to re- 
lieve his daughters of a portion of their task. One 
day Thomas Ellwood told me of a visit to his mas- 
ter Milton in which something exceeding inter- 
esting happened. He told me that after some 

1 1 find that this Incident is also told in "The Maiden and 
Married Life of Mary Powell." — Editor. 



8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

common discourse had passed between them Mil- 
ton called for a manuscript which he had been dic- 
tating to his daughters often at night, for since his 
blindness all days are equally night to him. Said 
my tutor — "He delivered it to me, bidding me 
take it home and read it at my leisure ; and when 
I had done so, to return it to him with my judg- 
ment on it. When I came home and set myself to 
read it, I found it was that excellent poem which 
is entitled Paradise Lost. After I had with the 
best of attention read it through I made master 
Milton another visit, and returned him the book 
with due acknowledgment of the favor he had 
done me in communicating it to me. He asked 
me how I liked it and I freely told him. Then 
after some discourse about it I said to him — 'Thou 
hast said much here of Paradise Lost but what hast 
thou to say about Paradise Found'?' He made no 
answer at first but sat some time and mused, then 
broke off that discourse and fell upon another sub- 
ject. After the pestilence in London had gone 
and the city well cleansed had become safely 
habitable again he returned thither and when 
afterwards I went to wait on him there, he showed 
me the second poem in manuscript, called Para- 
dise Regained, and in a pleasant tone he said to 



THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT 9 

me — 'This is owing to you for you put it into my 
head by the question which you asked me at Chal- 
font, for before that I had not thought of it.' " ^ 
So my tutor Thomas Ellwood told me and often 
again while the poet was at Chalfont we went to- 
gether to see the great man and to converse with 
him and also had permission from him to read 
aloud at the Grange certain beautiful passages 
from the heavenly epic which we admired greatly 
for its noble imagery and its majestic pictures. 
What glorious music also we enjoyed during those 
rare days at Chalfont. I was greatly fond of 
music and it was particularly the poet Milton's 
greatest delight. In his own little cottage and 
also at the Grange whither he often resorted with 
one or another of his daughters how many were 
our happy hours of poesy and song. The psalms 
of David in his sonorous voice again sounded forth 
in splendid paraphrases, he told us stories of the 
Puritan struggles in which he had played such a 
part and ofttimes he recited for us some noble 
lines from his "Comus," or his "Samson Agon- 
istes," which oft I thought had much in it of his 
own life. 

1 Related also in somewhat similar way by Ellwood in his 
Memoir. — Editor. 



lo A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

To-day went over again to see the goodly John 
Milton. He is always clad in a sober gentle suit 
and I think his countenance is most beautiful to 
look upon. His hair is long and silky, falling over 
his shoulders. Formerly it was a lovely brown 
but is now streaked with gray, but is still fair to 
look upon. He is, as you may know, the son of 
a gentleman of Buckinghamshire and is excel- 
lently connected. His grandsire was a zealous 
Papist and disinherited John Milton's father for 
leaving the Roman church. The cottage where 
Milton lives is a simple homely little dwelling, 
part of a row with others. It has a white-washed 
parlor stocked with old oak. The poet usually 
sits in the low room to the left of the door with 
his leg over the armed chair as he dictates some of 
his poems or other writings to one of his daughters. 
There is a quaint garden which is as pleasant in 
its way as that of Ann Hathaway's at Shottery 
which I have visited. There is a sedate sweetness 
in all that John Milton says or does, and often he 
exclaims — "How good is our God to us in all His 
gifts." He told me once of a pleasant thing that 
the fair Mary Powell had once said to him, she 
that afterwards became his wife. They were 
talking of the herbs and simples in the hedges and 



THE GRANGE AT CHALFONT ii 

she said how pretty some of their names were and 
she thought that though Adam had named all the 
animals in paradise, perhaps Eve had named all 
the flowers. It was a pretty thought. Himself 
has quaint imaginations. Once, he told me, as he 
walked home at night in his younger days he fan- 
cied the angels whispering in his ears and singing 
over his head and that instead of going to his bed 
like a reasonable being, he laid down on the grass 
and gazed on the sweet pale moon till she set and 
then on the bright stars till he seemed to see them 
moving in a slow solemn dance to the word — 
"How glorious is our God !" And he told me that 
sometimes he knew surely that there were all 
about him, although he could not see them, spirit- 
ual beings repairing the ravages of the day on the 
flowers among the trees and grass and hedges, and 
he believed it was only the film that original sin 
had spread over his eyes that prevented him from 
seeing them.^ It seemed rather uncanny, as he 
told me; it seemed to me like fairies and witches 
and ghosts. I liked it better when he recited for 
us that beautiful hymn on "The Nativity," of 
which I remember the lines : 

1 Also referred to in "The Maiden and Married Life of Mary 
Powell."— £^i/or 



12 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

"It was the winter wild, 
While the heaven-born child 

All meanly rudely wrapped in the rude manger lies; 
Nature in awe to him 
Had doffed her gaudy trim, 

With her great Master so to sympathize." 

And also he read to us a sweet and solemn sonnet 
which he had just written on his blindness which 
I thought so beautiful that I begged a copy of it 
and here it is — 

"When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent which is death to hide 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide; 
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,' 
I fondly ask"? But Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, *God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : His state 

Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;, 
They also serve who only stand and wait.' " 



CHAPTER II 

THE COMING OF WILL PENN 

MOST delightsome were these days at the 
Grange with such goodly company as 
Thomas Ellwood, John Milton, and dear quaint 
Deborah whom I love for her gentleness and 
brightness. 

And now to-day into this poetical and musical 
circle at Chalfont suddenly walked Will Penn the 
Quaker. I had only seen him once before for, oh, 
so short a time, but he had not forgotten me. I 
saw that at once. Again his deep eyes looked into 
mine and my heart thrilled. He had come down 
in haste from London to see my step-father Isaac 
Pennington about some important matters con- 
cerning our societies of Friends. It seemed to me 
from the very moment that his coming was a 
providence and directing of the Lord. Thomas 
Ellwood was there with us. John Milton was 
also present at the Grange at the time and he rose 
majestically to greet the Quaker hero, the son of 

13 



14 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Admiral Sir William Penn, for we all honored his 
valiant stand for the truth, in his long imprison- 
ment in the Tower of London from which he had 
issued such noble messages. As Will Penn 
greeted the Puritan poet, he also spake words of 
reverence and grateful praise for the poet's mighty 
sonnets, especially for the one on God's slaugh- 
tered saints. 

Never have I seen two more noble looking men 
together — John Milton, warrior of the spirit, 
prophet of God, embodying all the learning, schol- 
arship and spirituality of the Puritan people — a 
beautiful face, like a seer and saint of the Most 
High, and Will Penn, perhaps twenty years 
younger, but equally handsome, a serenity in his 
face, a daring courage and a beautifully religious 
intensity showing forth. My heart was assured 
as I looked into his face that he was a good man 
and a great man. 

That night Will Penn told us of his months 
in jail for the cause of Christ, for we were all so 
interested in hearing of his recent adventures for 
God. Seven months in the Tower! And for 
being a Quaker and for standing up for his con- 
science, uttering his truth in a pamphlet called 
"The Sandy Foundation Shaken." As he told us 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 15 

all so quietly and so bravely — how he had been 
arrested by Lord Arlington and sent to the Tower, 
unheard, uncharged, and uncommitted, because 
Arlington was hot in quarrel with his father the 
Admiral; how no bail was allowed; how his book, 
so spiritual and true, was called a blasphemous 
book; how he was kept a close prisoner with scanty 
fire in the depths of winter, with no privilege of 
seeing a friend or writing a letter, but treated as 
the blackest traitors were ; how it was told him that 
he must either recant or die a prisoner and he had 
sent word to his father by his servant — "Thou 
mayst tell my father that my prison shall be my 
grave before I will budge a jot. I owe my con- 
science to no mortal man. I have no fear. God 
will make amends for all." 

So he spake because of this. When his father 
heard that he had come out as a Quaker in Ire- 
land he summoned him home to England. The 
Admiral was confined to the house with gout and 
was unable to walk. But he sat in an easy chair 
and talked matters over with his son. After a 
long discussion of the various beliefs and customs 
of the Quakers, his father said he could tolerate 
all the Quaker beliefs except that which denied 
the right of self-defense, and as for their outward 



i6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

customs he objected to none except those which 
denied common courtesy. He said — "You may 
thee and thou whomsoever you please except the 
king, the Duke of York and myself. As for your 
hat you can be as boorish with it as you please, 
except in the house of your father who is a gentle- 
man, and in the presence of the King and the Duke 
of York, your sovereign and his heir apparent. 
On all else which may be spiritual and of the inner 
conscience, I yield. But on these things which are 
affairs of outward gentleness and decency I will 
standi" So the son asked until next day before 
he should decide and after hours of prayer for 
divine guidance he came back to his father and 
said that he must refuse to remove his hat for any 
man, and that he could not conscientiously use 
anything but the plain language, even though it 
be to his father or the King. His father was 
greatly disappointed and angry with him and re- 
proached him in the words — "What can you think 
of yourself after being so well born and carefully 
trained up in learning and courtly accomplish- 
ments to fit you for the place of ambassador at a 
foreign court or minister of the government at 
home, that you should sink all in becoming a 
Quaker preacher and make your associations with 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 17 

outcasts." But the son was firm. Later he told 
the Bishop who came to visit him in prison, 
that the Tower was the worst argument in the 
world to convince him, for, whoever was in the 
wrong, those who used force for religion could 
never be in the right. 

As my young Quaker hero spoke so simply and 
so fervently of his life, I loved him for his brave 
deeds. He told us how all winter he sat in his 
dungeon and at last he was allowed the use of pen 
and ink, and took to writing as the prisoner's solace 
and there he wrote the first draft of his book in 
defense of Quaker ways and Quaker truth called, 
"No Cross, No Crown." Verily as he told his 
story I saw that although he had been bound in 
prison yet his soul was free ; darkness might be in 
his dungeon, but the very light of heaven was in 
his heart. He told us also how he had become 
reconciled with his father. For after his im- 
prisonment and the frank defense of his course, his 
father began to see that there was something 
heroic in the principles for which his son was 
standing. He began to be proud of him. The 
Admiral had had his troubles with the Navy 
Board and had resigned and retired with Lady 
Penn to Wanstead where for a time he was ill and 



i8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

nigh to death. When this Quaker son had writ- 
ten another book in prison called "Innocency with 
her Open Face," — for so advised Canon Still- 
ingfleet of St. Paul's who had much converse 
with him in the Tower — it brought his release and 
His Majesty had sent word to deliver the prisoner 
up to his father. His father sent him for a time 
to Shangarry Castle in Ireland for some family 
business. But soon he hasted to Wanstead and 
was fully and tenderly reconciled to his father's 
heart. As he told his story to us, Thomas Ell- 
wood and my step-father asked him questions here 
and there. I found such a resoluteness in his 
spirit, such a singleness of heart for the truth and 
only the truth that my whole soul was thrilled 
with admiration. 

He stayed with us at the Grange that night. 
Both night and morning he opened up the Scrip- 
tures for us around the family altar and we waited 
upon God, the servants also being with us in our 
devotion. 

I had spoken little to him on that first evening, 
but on the next morning being left a little while 
together in the great library overlooking the gar- 
den, while father was called to superintend some 
business of the farm, he began to speak to me of 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 19 

some books, and of his life at Oxford in his student 
days. He told me of his studies at Christ Church 
College, of the famous Doctor John Owen, 
scholar and wit ; of the wondrous preacher, Robert 
South, the orator of the University; and of John 
Locke, a noble scholar and philosopher of his col- 
lege. 

He said that at Oxford University he was 
entered at Christ Church as a gentleman com- 
moner and a knight's son. His father wanted him 
to associate with gentlemen and to learn the man- 
ners of the aristocracy. It was however the year 
of the Restoration and the place was given over 
to follies and excesses. He says: "As I look 
back upon it now I can only describe it and the 
madness of it as hellish darkness and debauchery." 

He said that affairs at Oxford deeply shocked 
his sensitive heart, for he was a gentle, serious 
country lad with a Puritan conscience. Things at 
the University were in confusion. The Puritans 
were being ejected from their places and in their 
stead intense Churchmen, with their cavalier 
habits, were coming in. They did many wild 
things to shock the Puritans — they amused them- 
selves freely on the Lord's day, they patronized 
games and plays, they tippled and puffed tobacco, 



20 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

and swore and swaggered in all the newest fash- 
ions, and his soul, as he told me, scorned this wan- 
ton and audacious merry making. 

He told me of the quarrels of the Cavaliers and 
Puritans at Oxford, and of how he had first heard 
there a strange and earnest lay-preacher named 
Thomas Loe, a former Oxford student, who gave 
him the first awakening to the new doctrine of the 
gospel which George Fox was teaching. It stirred 
him through and through. It protested against 
all popish usages. It appealed for a return to 
apostolic Christianity. 

"This Thomas Loe," he said, "was in prison in 
the town jail with forty other Quakers when I 
came to Oxford as a student, and when he was re- 
leased and began preaching, it was the fact that 
he had suffered for his faith that first attracted me 
to him. I felt that he was an honest soul, how- 
ever misguided. Perhaps the fact, also, that it 
was forbidden us to listen to such preaching at- 
tracted me even the more. It was while Thomas 
Loe was speaking one day to us students that he 
told of what George Fox was hoping to do in 
America for religious liberty. That thought fired 
my blood and gave me a real opening of joy." ^ 

1 Similar language is also used by Penn in his journal. — 
Editor. 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 21 

He said that after this, he and other students 
neglected chapel for their own independent spirit- 
ual gatherings, and also refused to follow the new 
order for wearing the cap and gown in chapel 
which seemed to them a return to the surplices of 
Rome. He denounced these surplices as popish rags. 

Yea, he and his friends went so far that they 
rose in rebellion and fell upon all the students who 
appeared in surplices and tore them from them. 
Not content with this, they thrust the gowns into 
the vilest pools that could be found, poking them 
to the depths with long sticks. Then came stu- 
dent riots in Peckwater Quad and he was arrested 
as a ring leader of the rebellious students and was 
expelled from the college. So ended, he said with 
a smile, his course at Oxford. 

He left Oxford when he was eighteen years old. 
His father was very angry with him when he re- 
turned home after being banished from the col- 
lege. He told me that he underwent very bitter 
usage from his father, being whipped and beaten 
and turned out of doors. But his father insisted 
that he should have a full scholarly course, so he 
sent him into France where he spent two years at 
the Protestant College at Saumur — the years 
which he would have passed at Oxford. 



22 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

"My father evidently thought," he said, "that 
I had lived too much in the country and had too 
many queer notions and needed acquaintance with 
the wider world, so he determined that I should 
go abroad among the pleasant diversions of France 
to see life and to learn to behave like a gentleman 
and to be cured of my pious follies. It was the 
reign of Louis XIV when I traveled in France. 
Everything there was Roman Catholic, except now 
and then an oasis of liberal thought. One of these 
centers was at this Protestant College at Saumur 
which was a beacon light of Huguenot learning in 
France. I found that the great Amyraut was one 
of the most illustrious teachers in this institution 
and the faith that was taught there was beautiful 
and cheerful, full of human tenderness and domes- 
tic virtue. It seemed to me one of the best types 
of the Protestant faith, not aggressive, nor intol- 
erant, nor defiant, but full of sweetness and refine- 
ment. Altogether it was an excellent thing for 
me to come into close contact with this beautiful 
Huguenot spirit. I staid here for nearly two 
years, mastering the French tongue, getting better 
acquainted with the writings of the early church 
fathers, and learning to revere my good teacher 
Amyraut with all the intensity of my nature. It 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 23 

was pleasant there, he said, reading the classics 
and the fathers, pondering over the mysteries and 
problems of theology with these learned divines 
and revelling in the poetry, the language, and the 
history of France. , 

He told me that the Paris of those days was a 
very attractive city. He said, "I enjoyed exceed- 
ingly a long visit there. I traveled in company 
with certain persons of rank; I had plenty of 
money and high spirits and everything was new 
and attractive to me. One night in a Paris street 
I was assailed by some intoxicated gallant, and 
crossed swords with him and disarmed him. Ac- 
cording to the rules I had a right to kill my assail- 
ant, but I declined to do so, and had much honor 
and fame thereby." 

And much more he told about his travels, and 
his hopes and purposes. 

How delightful to me was his friendly speech 
and sometimes while he spoke he looked so earn- 
estly into my eyes. 

He stayed with us the next night also at the 
Grange, but I saw little of him except as he told 
to all of us the story of the sufferings of Friends 
in various parts of England and Ireland and of 
the great work that was being done in the north of 



24 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

England where the Lord had raised up stalwart 
defenders of our cause in the Fells of Swarthmore, 
and especially the saintly Margaret Fell, the 
mother of the household, who had become con- 
vinced, and stood out an earnest defender of the 
faith of the Quakers, and afterwards became the 
beloved wife of dear George Fox. 

Somehow as he spoke of the Fells and of dear 
Margaret Fell, I thought what a noble thing it was 
to share in such goodly work. Thomas Ellwood 
had seemed unusually solemn as Will Fenn was 
talking and looking at me. To-night in passing 
through the hall he stopped and spoke to me, say- 
ing that he opined that God was in all this doing, 
and might not this be the stranger for whom the 
Lord had reserved me. What strange fancies he 
has I For this noble stranger cannot think thus 
of me and yet he is one whom I believe my whole 
heart could love. 

It was on the third day as I was seated in a rus- 
tic arbor of the garden knitting, that he came out, 
having finished business with father, and seated 
himself with me and began to talk of his dreams. 

He told me that even in his boyhood, but espe- 
cially while he was at Oxford in his student days, 
he began to dream that he should have a great 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 25 

work to do for God, that some day a virtuous and 
holy empire free from bigotry and from the for- 
malism of the State religion might be founded in 
that far off western world about which he was 
studying and which had so often formed a topic of 
conversation at his father's hearth. And when 
he found the same thought in Thomas Loe and 
George Fox, said he, "My mind discovered a real 
opening of joy." 

And when after his two years in France, he had 
made journey through Switzerland and Italy, and 
had met Algernon Sidney, then in exile, he said 
that at once he had become his earnest pupil, and 
his faithful friend, and had learned from him the 
meaning and glory of a free state. He came back 
to England — smilingly he said — speaking French, 
wearing French pantaloons, carrying his rapier in 
the French style. "A very modish person," as his 
friend Mr. Pepys satirically remarked, "grown a 
fine gentleman — something of learning has he got, 
but a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of 
the French garb and affected manner of gait and 
speech." ^ But who will take Mr. Pepys' quaint 
speech too seriously'? He told me that his father 
kept him busy after he returned from France, took 

1 similar comment occurs in Pepys' diary. — Editor. 



26 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

him to the official gallery at Whitehall, presented 
him to great persons, made him pay court visits and 
also placed him as a student in Lincoln's Inn to ac- 
quire some scraps of law, to prepare him for being 
a statesman. But then came the summer of the 
Great Plague in London and in those days of sick- 
ness and death God wrought a change in his spirit. 
He was driven to quiet meditation and his books, 
and the vanity of all things earthly came upon 
him. O those dreadful days of the Plague in 
London in the summer of 1665! The pestilence 
had begun late in May. He told me how he saw 
in Drury Lane two or three houses marked with 
red crosses upon their doors and the words, "Lord, 
have mercy," written there. And afterwards, 
many more such houses as day by day the plague 
grew worse. And soon there was no more study- 
ing at Lincoln's Inn, but he longed for the clean 
country. 

What calamities has old London had ! He said 
that scarce had the bells ceased tolling day and 
night for the incessant deaths from the Plague 
than the Great Fire swept the city. It began in 
Pudding Lane, and raged for nigh four days even 
to the Temple. Many houses were blown up by 
gunpowder and thus the fire was mastered. 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 27 

Thousands were homeless, the river swarmed with 
boats and goods, and Moorfields was crowded by 
the multitudes. Many saw in these distresses the 
warning hand of God. But, said he, I wonder 
if, after all, there may not be blessing in such 
troubles, even as the Scriptures promise us. 

These things drove him, as he told me, to the 
green fields for safety and refreshment of spirit, 
and soon after his father sent him over to his 
estate in Ireland, to the merry Duke of Ormond, 
at Dublin, and to Shangarry Castle, the family 
estate of the Penns. Here, as he told me, he was 
made Clerk of the Cheque at Kinsale Harbor and 
encouraged to enter His Majesty's service. He 
became a soldier and won great praise in a fight 
against the mutineers at Carrickfergus. He said 
he longed to become Captain Penn and to com- 
mand the company of foot at Kinsale. He even 
committed the vanity of having his portrait 
painted in a coat of shining steel. But his father 
did not encourage him in his desire to be a sol- 
dier; he intimated that he should keep out of the 
army. What really his father had in mind, as he 
afterwards learned, was that he should become a 
statesman and succeed him in the peerage which 
was about to come to him under the title of Lord 



28 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Weymouth. Surely there was divine direction 
in this matter of his not becoming a soldier at 
this time. Thus was he directed. One day he 
heard that his old friend, Thomas Loe, who had 
so stirred him in his Oxford days, was to preach 
in Cork near by. He heard it in the shop of a 
woman Friend in that city where he had gone to 
procure some articles of clothing. They spoke 
together of Thomas Loe and he said, if he only 
knew where that preacher was, if it were a hun- 
dred miles off, he would go to hear him again. 
She told him he need not go so far for Thomas 
Loe had lately come thither and would be at 
meeting the next day. So he went to the meeting 
and when Thomas Loe stood up to preach he was, 
as he said, "exceedingly reached and wept much." 

This was a crisis in his life. Every word 
seemed to come straight to his soul. Thence- 
forth there was no more perplexity, he had made 
definite decisions. It was at this time^as he said 
afterwards — that "the Lord visited me with a cer- 
tain sound and testimony of his eternal word 
through Thomas Loe." 

He had gone to hear him, wondering whether he 
would be as deeply moved as he had been in his 
student days. The preacher gave out his text — 




GULI SPRINGETT, PENN'S FIRST WIFE. 

From an old stipple engraving after the original painting on glass, in 
possession of descendants of Henry Swann, of Dorking, England. 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 29 

"There is a faith that overcomes the world and 
there is a faith that is overcome by the world" — 
this and the message that followed seemed to him 
to come straight from Heaven to his heart. It 
was a vision of the truth and a call to duty such 
as had never come to him before — it seemed as if 
the Lord stood by and beckoned him. All his 
being rose up in response. That night (he said) 
I became a Quaker, and willing to be known as one 
of them and willing to suffer with them. 

As to the rest, he said: *'God has given me 
these dreams to reveal my life and my work 
to me. I have given myself to him and I will 
follow whither the Spirit shall lead. To-day I 
want to tell thee of another dream, for all through 
these years in prison and out, he has given me a 
longing for a helpmeet. I dreamed of such an 
one while I was in the Tower, of one who should 
share my cross and my crown, of one who in her- 
self was innocency with her open face. I thought 
in symbols of human as well as of divine affec- 
tion. When I beheld thee at the very first, I knew 
that the Lord had led me to thee. Three days 
have I noted thee and sought the Lord for direc- 
tion. And he has given me a command to love 
thee. For me has he reserved thee, that thou 



30 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

shouldst be unto me a companion and a helpmeet 
in all the work that our God hath for us. Thou 
art the fulfillment of my heart's dream and de- 
sire. May the Lord put it into thy heart to an- 
swer the right words." 

And what could I do with that handsome youth, 
that valiant hero of the faith, that prophet of the 
truth of God there before me pleading? Had 
not this son of Admiral Penn revealed his strength 
of soul by giving up court, wealth, position, and 
honor for the sake of the people called Quakers? 
Surely his imprisonment was in God's providence 
for it had given him the inspiration and the leisure 
to write great books and to make our cause known 
to mankind. It was the testimony of a martyr 
and a message of a prophet. Was it not a noble 
achievement for a young man of twenty-four to 
have become a leader of his faith and a writer of 
three books that will live since they are so full of 
the living truth of God? I was proud of his 
achievements in the Lord. The Spirit was surely 
leading him. 

Had he not done noble things that stir my soul, 
was he not scholar and soldier of the Lord, al- 
ready having borne a valiant testimony to his 
conscience and to his faith? And here he was 



THE COMING OF WILL PENN 31 

pleading to me for loving comfort and for spiritual 
cooperation in his great life work, in the fulfill- 
ment of his splendid dreams. 

As I looked at him then, he was as handsome a 
youth as I ever beheld — fresh-faced, rosy-lipped, 
his hair parted in the middle and his long cavalier 
locks reaching to his shoulders. There was a seri- 
ous-mindedness showing in his face which indi- 
cated strong character. His eyes had an intense 
earnestness. They had a determined look in them 
settled and steady, but at the same time there was 
in them a soft and lustrous gentleness. Surely 
there is character noble and heroic in this man, 
both in ideals and action, and surely also, a bold 
and courageous spirit and temper that will bear 
all trials and difficulties with a serene and cheer- 
ful composure and an unswerving faith. 

I sat silent for awhile, meditating and waiting 
for the divine light. Then I looked again quietly 
into his deep eyes and earnest face. What was I, 
to withhold help in such a time? What was I, 
to withstand the manifest leading of the Lord? 

So I put my hands into his, as I answered, "Be 
it unto me even as thou wilt !" 



CHAPTER III 

THE VISION AT WANSTEAD 

TO-DAY Will has been telling me of his boy- 
hood days. 
He said that he scarcely remembered the little 
house close to the Tower of London and just under 
the wall, where he had been born. But he told 
me much of his boyhood life in the pretty village 
of Wanstead in Essex and of his schooldays there 
and at Chigwell. He felt it as a good omen, he 
said, that he, who was now all for peace and was 
determined to be all his life for peace, was born in 
the midst of civil war of that great Puritan Revo- 
lution that brought in the Puritan Commonwealth 
and Oliver Cromwell as lord protector of the 
rights and liberties of the people of England. 
Said he was only five years old when King Charles 
was beheaded. This was while they were living 
at Wanstead where they dwelt until he was 
twelve. Said he loved to hear the Puritan dis- 
putes in the village, for Wanstead was a hot bed 

32 



THE VISION AT WANSTEAD 33 

of new ideas. They were earnest against forms 
and ceremonies, he said, and he had his first ideas 
of human rights and spiritual liberty from them. 
His father was away all this time on sea duty, and 
Will was busy with his Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics. Told me of his mother, Lady Penn, who, 
he said, is a most kind and loving mother, but a 
merry one withal. She is the daughter of John 
Jasper, an English merchant of Rotterdam, and 
she is stout and handsome with many of the 
sprightly ways that she had learned in the Dutch 
city. She bubbles over with humor and is far 
livelier than his father, the Admiral, who, he says, 
is usually rather stern. 

Said he loved the quietness of the green country 
around the village of Wanstead, where he used 
to make his prayers in old Wanstead Church, 
which was devotedly Puritan. The chief men in 
the place were stern set against any Popish inno- 
vations and were ready to punish every offender 
against the true reformed Protestant religion. 

Told me this story: "In my childhood days 
in company with my father, the Admiral, and the 
sprightly Mr. Pepys, I saw the King. Mr. Pepys 
had on his velvet coat and my father wore his uni- 
form with much gold lace. We had a good room 



34 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

in Cornhill with wine and good cake, and saw the 
show very well as the King rode by in procession. 
The streets were new gravel and the fronts of 
the houses hung with carpets, with ladies looking 
out of all the windows, and so glorious was the 
show with gold and silver that sometimes we were 
not able to look at it, our eyes being so overcome." ^ 

"My father," he said, "was captain in the navy 
when I was born — ^he was only twenty-one years 
old then; two years later, he was made rear-ad- 
miral for Ireland, and by the time I was ten years 
old he had become vice-admiral of the English 
fleet. Was a wonderful man." 

"The year of my birth," he said, "was the 
year when the famous battle of Marston Moor 
was fought and I was only a year old when the 
battle of Naseby was won and Cromwell pro- 
claimed the victory of the people. I was only 
four years old when the stubborn King Charles 
Stuart was beheaded at Whitehall. I grew up 
under the influence and spell of Oliver Cromwell 
and the Puritans." 

"My mother," he told me, "is English and not 
Dutch, as some have imagined, because she was 
born in Rotterdam. She is the daughter of an 

1 An account of this event is also given in Pepys. — Editor. 



THE VISION AT WANSTEAD 35 

English merchant, settled there as a resident part- 
ner of a London trading house and is entirely Eng- 
lish in ancestry. 

"My father's title at the age of thirty was the 
highest rank that a sea-going officer could attain — 
that of Vice-Admiral of England, inferior only to 
the Lord High Admiral, who was a member of 
the cabinet and not a sea-going officer." 

I was amused at the qualifications which Will 
told me the deed of gift prescribed for his school 
at Chigwell, where he studied Latin and Greek, 
together with ciphering and casting up accounts. 
Its master must be, as the deed said, "a good poet, 
of a sound religion, neither papal or Puritan, of 
a good behavior, of a sober and honest conversa- 
tion, no tippler, nor haunter of ale houses, no 
puffer of tobacco, and, above all, apt to teach and 
severe in his government." Said that the atmos- 
phere of Chigwell School was truly severe. 
Among other things the articles commanded — 
"Of reading there should be none but the Greek 
and Latin classics; no novelties, fictions, nor con- 
ceited modern writings." So that from such 
schooling, under such a master, he could after- 
wards always say — "I was bred a Protestant and 
that strictly." 



36 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Told me how when the expedition against Spain 
had failed, both the leaders of army and navy — 
his father was the latter — had their commissions 
taken away from them by the angry Cromwell 
and they were thrown into dungeons in the Tower 
to meditate for a while on their failure "to singe 
the Spaniard's beard." It was a sad misfortune 
for the Admiral and his family. Although this 
incarceration in the Tower did not last long, and 
although he was reinstated after a time in his rank 
and emoluments, yet the tribulation while it lasted 
deeply impressed the mind of the boy and gave 
him a new idea of the uncertainties of fortune. 
He was an impressionable lad, and shortly after- 
wards had his strange vision in his room at Wan- 
stead. 

This was the vision. One day when he was not 
eleven years old a very wonderful dream came to 
him. Sitting in his room, he told me, he was sur- 
prised by a strange feeling in his heart, and there 
came a new and glorious radiance into his cham- 
ber. These were his very words: 

"It was when I was about eleven years old that 
I had my first dream, waking dream, or vision, and 
it seemed to me as a heavenly experience. I was 
suddenly surprised with an inward comfort and 



THE VISION AT WANSTEAD 37 

as I thought an external glory in the room which 
filled me with religious emotion and I had the 
strongest conviction of the being of God and of a 
conscious sense of him and that the soul of man 
was thus capable of enjoying communion with 
him. I believed also that the seal of a divine mis- 
sion had been put upon me at this moment, and 
that I had been awakened and called to a holy 
life." 

He loved to talk of this vision. He said he 
felt such a joyous emotion in his soul and he 
seemed surrounded by such a soft and holy light. 
It seemed like a visitation from on high. All that 
it meant he could not say, but he was exalted by 
the sudden joy and awed by the sacred light, and 
somehow he was sure that the Lord had come near 
to him and anointed him for service. 

Somehow I believe that all his life he lived in 
the light of the glory of that early vision at Wan- 
stead, so often did he refer to it. From that hour 
I am sure something deep and holy in purpose 
came into his life. 

But now the clouds seem to be gathering 
around the great Cromwell's head. He had been 
offered a crown by his Parliament, but had sternly 
refused it, for he knew that the crown could not 



38 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

sustain his waning power. Marston Moor, 
Naseby, Dunbar, and Worcester could not repeat 
their victories. The spirit of Praise-God Bare- 
bones still lived, but it was dying. So Cromwell 
lived the remainder of his life, beetle-browed and 
defiant, fighting against disease and fighting 
against the inevitable, like an old hero in his last 
battle. When soon afterward he died, the Puri- 
tan power in England came to an end and the 
Restoration brought back King Charles II. This 
was when Will was about sixteen years old, in 
1660, as he told me, and was just about to begin 
studies at Oxford. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 

METHINKS it is as Will Shakespeare has 
somewhere said in his dramas — the course 
of true love never did run smooth, for it was not 
long after what I have written that the enemies 
of the truth again sought revenge against my dear 
Will. While he was staying with us at Chalfont 
(for he often came now and stopped at the 
Grange) he was constantly and earnestly studying 
the Catholic question, although he had often medi- 
tated on it since his student days at the French 
College at Saumur. He had many Catholic 
friends, and he had learned to distinguish between 
the disciples and the doctrines. Besides being 
tolerant toward the Catholics, he was no less 
kindly disposed toward the Puritans, although 
many of these, the disbanded hosts of Cromwell, 
were still hot against monarchy and against the 
established Church. Time and again we talked 
it all over together, and he feels as I do, that we 

39 



40 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

must stand constantly and firmly for liberty of 
conscience and free worship alike for Catholics, 
Puritans, Quakers, and all honest religious people. 

Parliament has now again renewed the Con- 
venticle Act which makes it a crime for any com- 
pany of religious people to meet together for wor- 
ship other than according to the order of the estab- 
lished Church of England. The penalty is heavy 
fine or imprisonment or transportation. 

And now he writ a pamphlet which I greatly 
liked, called "A Caveat Against Popery." It was 
a plea for religious toleration in an age that so 
much needed it. It stirred up enemies and again 
his daily haunts were watched, and as he went to 
the Quaker meeting in Grace Church Street and 
arose to address the meeting, a sergeant and 
picquet of soldiers entered the room. 

As he took off his hat to pray in the midst of his 
preaching they came forward and took him, and 
they also arrested an old soldier of the common- 
wealth. Captain William Mead. They marched 
the prisoners to the Lord Mayor, and when Will 
Penn, for conscience' sake, refused to doff his hat, 
the Mayor threatened to send him to Bridewell 
and have him fiogged, even though he was the son 
of an Admiral. 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 41 

This was the charge preferred — that "they tu- 
multuously did assemble and congregate them- 
selves together to the disturbance of the King's 
peace and to the great terror of his liege people 
and subjects" — which charge, of course, was all 
untrue, for they were the most quiet and peaceable 
of people. The Mayor committed both of the 
prisoners to the Black Dog, a sponging house in 
Newgate Market, where they must await their 
trial at the Old Bailey. From this prison he 
wrote to me and to his father. His letter told 
how he gloried in his sufferings for principle, but 
regretted so deeply that for the time he must be 
separated from me. Nor was I allowed to see 
him. 

Now when the trial came off in the Old Bailey, 
I was there and watched and listened with a deep 
grief but also with a glowing pride. I need not 
record what I saw and heard. It is all written 
down in full elsewhere — all the accusations and 
contentions, the questions and answers. It was a 
famous trial with great men and ten justices in 
charge — the Recorder, the Lord Mayor, the Sher- 
iffs, and twelve citizens of London as a jury. 
First, they demanded that he take the oath of al- 
legiance. But he refused to take this or any oath. 



42 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

He said it was against his conscience, for Christ 
said, "Swear not at all." Equally was it against 
his conscience to take up arms at all. But they 
insisted on the oath, the judge saying, ''I vow, 
Mr. Penn, I am sorry for you. You are an in- 
genious gentleman. All the world must allow 
that; and you have a plentiful estate. Why 
should you render yourself unhappy by associating 
with such a people? I must send you to Newgate 
for six months." And my lover bravely an- 
swered, "I would have thee and all men know 
that I scorn that religion which is not worth suf- 
fering for, and able to sustain those that are 
afflicted for its sake. Thy religion persecutes, 
mine forgives. I desire God to forgive you all 
that are concerned in my commitment." 

As to the accusation that they were armed and 
disturbers of the peace, they pleaded not guilty, 
but I remember my noble Will explaining proudly 
at this trial, "We confess ourselves so far from re- 
canting or declining to vindicate the assembling of 
ourselves to preach, to pray or to worship God that 
we declare to all the world, we believe it to be 
our indispensable duty to meet constantly on so 
good an account, nor shall all the powers on earth 
be able to prevent us." Were not these brave 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 43 

words'? He stood there as an Englishman con- 
tending for our ancient laws, rights and liberties. 
He was fighting valiantly for every man's rights 
of conscience. 

The prisoners were sent to "the Hole" in New- 
gate, the vilest place in any jail in England. The 
jury then deliberated, but would not bring in a 
verdict of condemnation, and the judge sent them 
out again and again, and locked them up without 
meat, drink, fire, or tobacco. Said the judge, 
"We will have a verdict by the help of God or 
you shall starve for it." Three times they 
brought in the same verdict until the judge cried, 
"Would that the Inquisition might be brought to 
England to settle such fellows." Again were 
they locked up and suffered from hunger and 
thirst in the utterly foul chamber. Some said 
they must give way or die, but they nobly held 
out. These jurors fought as my lover did, for 
freedom of conscience and for the rights of jurors. 
They were prepared to die but never to betray 
the cause of right. Again were they called out 
but their verdict was, "Not guilty." Then in 
anger the judge fined the two prisoners and the 
twelve jurymen for contempt of court and sent all 
of them to Newgate. From his dreary prison 



44 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

every day my lover writes to me full of tenderness 
and affection and trusting in God for the justice 
of his cause. 

I must also tell this incident, which has a bear- 
ing. Thomas Ellwood and I are most excellent 
friends, even though I have given myself to Will 
Penn instead of to him. He has confessed to me, 
that for a long time he had been devotedly at- 
tached to me, although he had never allowed him- 
self to indicate it in any way. He says that he 
was more than careful, because there were those 
who were constantly suspicious that he was seek- 
ing me and perhaps my fortune. He told me 
that he had scarcely hoped to win me, who was 
so far above him, but that he loved to be near me 
and serve me, and that when our friend Will Penn 
had come, he had seemed to know in his heart that 
this was he for whom I had been reserved. And 
his heart gave consent. Thomas Ellwood will 
always be to me a brother and a counselor. I feel 
that I can rely on him in every time of need, and 
especially in these days when my dear Will is in 
prison. 

Not long ago Thomas Ellwood accompanied me 
from Chalfont to my Uncle Springett's in Sussex. 
We went by way of London and as we were going 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 45 

out by the Tunbridge road we were set at by some 
of the Duke of York's rude fellows. They tried 
to snatch me off my horse by the waist, but 
Thomas Ellwood whipped them off most vigor- 
ously once and again. So we rode to Tunbridge 
and beyond the Wells, and got safe to Uncle 
Springett's house, and told him all our danger and 
trouble. But the journey home was uneventful 
and safe. 

Now as Will served his time in the Tower, his 
father saw that his son's religion gave him courage 
and serenity in the midst of misfortune. He ap- 
preciated the heroic spirit manifested, perhaps he 
saw his own obstinate will in his son. Yet what- 
ever it was, he was not as indignant as before, and 
seemed to give him even something of admiration. 

But scarcely was my dear lover delivered from 
the prison when his father, who had been steadily 
declining in health, grew greatly worse. Will 
hastened to Wanstead and found his father on his 
deathbed. Deeply moved in spirit, "Son Wil- 
liam," he murmured, "I am weary of the world. 
The snares of life are greater than the fears of 
death. Let nothing in this world tempt you to 
wrong your conscience. Bury me near my 
mother; live all in love; I pray God will bless 



46 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

you all." So he died, eleven days after the trial 
at Old Bailey, forgiving and approving his son. 
I wish that I had known the great admiral. I 
was soon to know him as his son's promised bride, 
but his sickness came and prevented. I tried to 
comfort my dear Will as best I could, and oft he 
resorted to our home, and oft our letters carried 
by the post brought heart-felt messages. 

How quaint the inscription which Will wrote 
for his father's tombstone and had carven thereon. 
Part of it reads — "With a gentle and even gale, he 
arrived and anchored in his last and best port, at 
Wanstead in the County of Essex the 16 of Sep- 
tember, 1670, being then but forty-nine years and 
four months old." Thus had the mariner reached 
the desired haven, but it seemed a short life, al- 
though a remarkable one. 

After Admiral Penn was dead, his enemies 
again sought to harm my lover. Again they as- 
sailed him because he would not take an oath. 
They arrested him at Wheeler Street Meeting as 
he arose to address the meeting, and carried him 
to the Tower and lodged him in a dungeon. He 
was condemned to six months' imprisonment. 

It is a great sorrow and trial for me to have my 
lover thus kept from me in prison again, but he 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 47 

was so brave about it that it made me brave. He 
felt that he was bearing testimony to the truth 
and thus honoring Christ, and I rejoiced with him. 
But 0! my woman's heart did so miss him. 
And O I the uncertainty of it all I Will he ever 
be released? Will we ever be together again'? 
"As the Lord will," is my constant solace, but 
again my heart murmurs, "How long, O Lord, 
how long?" Nevertheless, I try to keep a brave 
front. I write to him full of hope and courage 
and I go about the daily duties as if all were well. 

So for these six long months he was kept in 
Newgate jail. But besides his noble, loving let- 
ters to me, which I have saved in the strong black 
box, while he was in prison at this time he also 
wrote no less than four wonderful pamphlets full 
of light and testimony. One was called "The 
Great Case of Liberty of Conscience," which I 
have read with great joy, so nobly was it writ. 
Another was "Truth Rescued from Lnposture." 
And the two other are called, "A Postscript to 
Truth Exalted," and "An Apology for the 
Quakers." And scarcely had he been released 
from prison than the call of duty came again. 
And what was I to resist duty? 



48 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

To-day Will came to me for a great concern 
was on his mind to bear testimony in Holland and 
in Germany. He said that even while he was in 
prison the Macedonian cry had come to him in a 
vision. So I encouraged him and said, "Go and 
the Lord be with you, but come back soon." 
With a loving greeting he was gone. As his duty 
seemed to direct him, he went straight to some 
Dutch towns where, through William Caton and 
others, the principles of the Friends had already 
made some way. He went first to the free city 
of Embden for he could speak the low Dutch 
pretty well. His meetings were held at the house 
of Dr. Haesbert, who was greatly impressed by 
the new teachings and became a strong Quaker 
champion in Holland. A goodly society was soon 
formed there. Then he went into parts of Ger- 
many, making acquaintance with Princess Eliza- 
beth of the Rhine and of some of her friends, the 
Labadists, the followers of the famous Jean de 
Labadie, who had once been a Jesuit, but was 
now a Protestant mystic. He met other reli- 
gious communities on this visit, some from Eng- 
land, who were members of the great Puritan 
party waiting to sail for America, and others who 
were being persecuted and driven out of their 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 49 

homes in Germany because they followed liberty 
of conscience. With all these he took counsel 
and became to them a friend and apostle of the 
true faith. 

He wrote to me how his heart was stirred as 
these exiled people talked of America, the land 
of promise, how many ship loads had already set 
sail, how some accounts had already come back of 
the beauty and fertility of the new country. His 
letters were enthusiastic concerning these devout 
and sturdy people. I could see he was dreaming 
again his great dream of founding a free state 
in the depths of the virgin wilderness, where every 
man should have his full right and liberties and 
be able to worship God according to his conscience. 

"But first of all, my dream of thee must be 
fulfilled," he wrote. "I pray God my journey- 
ings may soon be ended and that I may be again 
with thee." And so prayed I, for these days of 
our courtship had been mostly in absence — in 
prison and in journeying, by land and by sea. 
Yet I knew his heart was always with me. 

Suddenly one day I heard the sound of a horse 
on the road to Chalfont, the gate of the Grange 
opened, and my lover clasped me to his heart with 
the words, "Thank God, I am here, and to stay !" 



CHAPTER V 

A QUAKER WEDDING 

I HAVE always wondered how in the midst of 
his busy and heroic life, so full of religious 
controversy, so earnest and continuous in preach- 
ing, so troubled with court trials and imprison- 
ments, came this ray of light in the darkness, this 
fair romance of love, this sweet touch of human 
tenderness in which it was my happiness to have 
such a beautiful part. 

It was at King's Farm at Chorley Wood, near 
the little village of Ammersham, that we two 
stood in a select and quiet company of grave and 
ancient Friends, and with prayer and joining of 
hands, we took each other and were united in 
marriage. A very solemn meeting it was, and in 
a weighty frame of mind we were, in which we 
sensibly felt that the Lord was with us, and was 
joining us together. 

We were married in the beautiful springtime. 
I shall never forget the sweetness and the so- 

50 



A QUAKER WEDDING 51 

lemnity of those days. We used for our wedding 
agreement nearly the same beautiful words that 
were used when George Fox and Margaret Fell, 
our dear friends, were married. We love this 
ancient custom where, having several times to 
Friends propounded our intention of joining to- 
gether in honorable marriage in the covenant of 
God, we then in a public meeting appointed for 
the purpose took each other before witnesses and 
the elders of the people, even as Laban appointed 
a meeting at the marriage of Jacob and as a meet- 
ing was appointed on purpose when Ruth and 
Boaz took each other, and also as it was in Cana, 
where Christ and his disciples went to a marriage. 
So in the everlasting power and covenant of God 
and through the assistance of the Lord, we made 
our solemn declarations in the presence of God, 
his angels, and that holy assembly. 

Very cordially had the consent and approbation 
of Friends been given to our marriage, so the 
Friendly ceremony took place quickly fourth 
month 4th, 1672,^ at Chorley Wood, at a farm- 
house called King's, where meeting was being kept. 
This quaint old farmhouse was probably a hun- 

1 This date was originally written second month, as will 
be seen in this marriage agreement, for April was then so 
called in the old style. — Editor. 



52 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

dred years old; timber- framed with curious win- 
dows; the large room where the marriage took 
place was quaint and old-fashioned. The certifi- 
cate of our marriage, which I sacredly cherish, 
runneth thus : 

"Whereas, William Penn of Walthamstow, in 
the County of Essex, and Gulielma Maria 
Springett, of Penn, in the County of Bucks, hav- 
ing first obtained the good will and consent of 
their nearest friends & relations, did in two pub- 
lick Monthly Meetings of the people of God called 
Quakers, declare their intention to take each other 
in Marriage, & upon serious and due consider- 
ation were fully approved of the said Meetings, 
as by several weighty testimonies did appear. 

"These are now to certifie all persons whom it 
doth or may concern that upon the fourth day 
of the second month in the year one thousand six 
hundred seventy two, the said William Penn 
and Gulielma Maria Springett did, in a godly 
sort & manner (according to the good old Order 
and practice of the Church of Christ) in a publick 
Assembly of the People of the Lord at King's 
Charle-wood in the County of Hertford, solemnly 
and expressly take each other in marriage, mu- 
tually promising to be loving, true and faithful 



A QUAKER WEDDING 53 

to each other in that relation, so long as it shall 
please the Lord to continue their natural lives." 

And in testimony to our marriage, nearly fifty 
of the good Friends present signed with us, among 
them Thomas Ellwood. 

It was with joyous but tearful eyes that we 
signed the certificate. Many Friends who signed 
with us, both men and women, bore loving testi- 
mony that there was a sense of the power and 
presence of the living God manifested in that still 
and earnest assembly at our wedding. On two 
white palfreys we rode to our new home at Rick- 
mans worth, about six miles from Chalfont, for 
we would not disturb Lady Penn in the home at 
Wanstead. 

O these dear days at our little home at Rick- 
mansworth — a continual and blessed honeymoon. 
The spring and summer went joyously. Nothing 
could beguile my loving husband from his quiet 
home — no flattery of princes nor attacks of foes. 
These were days of perfect repose and peace. He 
told me again and again that he had never known 
such rest of mind and heart. His father had left 
him a plentiful estate — only a life interest being 
reserved for Lady Penn. His, therefore, was the 
whole of a large property, the plate, the house- 



54 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

hold furniture, the money (not much less than 
sixteen thousand pounds still owed to his father 
the Admiral by the government), the family lands 
in England and in Ireland, the family claims in 
Spain and in Jamaica, and he was left as sole 
executor of all. Besides this there is something 
that I brought as dowry — the estate of Worming- 
hurst, which some day we may occupy as our own. 
Surely he is a wealthy man with his income of fif- 
teen hundred pounds a year. Is it not a responsi- 
bility to use it well, to do much good and to live 
most honorably'? And so he accepts it. 

Yet what a temptation it is for him to become 
just a quiet country gentleman and to cultivate 
the paternal acres in peace and happiness. This 
he would do, had he not felt the divine leading in 
his soul to greater work and I know that it is my 
part to inspire and aid him to do the Lord's mani- 
fest will. 

So forth we go on the Lord's work, sometimes 
for weeks together, traveling and telling those 
who will listen the truth which has come to our 
hearts. I ride with him from town to town as he 
preaches the message of the Quaker faith. I sit 
at his side as he writes his pamphlets and books. 
No less than twenty-six works and many of them 



A QUAKER WEDDING 55 

long ones came from his pen in these happy years. 
He wrote on the "Christian Quaker," and on 
"England's Present Interest." His whole pur- 
pose, as he clearly set it forth, is to preserve the 
ancient rights and liberties of the people, to gain 
entire freedom in matters of faith, and to en- 
deavor to promote the growth of true and practi- 
cal religion. All this work keeps him happily at 
home in the intervals of traveling, and it is a 
beautiful time, for we talk over all these things to 
be said and written and we have so many hours of 
sweet communion. There are many letters also 
to be written to our friends and especially on be- 
half of suffering Quakers who were constantly 
being haled to prison for conscience' sake. 

I rejoice in the sweet nature and pure-hearted- 
ness of my dear husband. Once when he was on 
trial Sir John Robinson said: "You have been 
as bad as other folks." But my husband cried: 
"When and where*? I charge thee tell the com- 
pany to my face." And when Robinson an- 
swered, "Abroad and at home, too," my husband 
stoutly replied, "I make this bold challenge to all 
men, women, and children upon earth, justly to 
accuse me with ever having seen me drunk, heard 
me swear, utter a curse, or speak one obscene word, 



56 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

much less have I ever made it my practice. I 
speak this to God's glory who has ever preserved 
me from the power of those pollutions and that 
from a child begot an hatred in me towards them." 

To-day I set out many strange trays of colored 
flowers. I hope they will prosper and grow 
brightly. 

Yesterday I enjoyed very much a debate which 
my husband held here at Rickmansworth with 
Richard Baxter, the learned author of "The 
Saints' Rest." This eminent divine had asserted 
that he found many Quakers around Rickmans- 
worth, "because Mr. W. Penn, their captain, 
dwelleth there and keepeth them continually 
stirred up." So he challenged my husband forth- 
with. They debated in public from ten in the 
morning till five in the afternoon, the great crowd 
going without dinner to listen to the disputation, 
but not much was settled. 

After this debate neither seemed able to sur- 
render, although they had both talked so long and 
vehemently. Indeed my husband had enjoyed 
the exercise so much that he offered Baxter a room 
in his house that they might argue together every 
day. 



A QUAKER WEDDING 57 

I love my pretty garden here, and all the out- 
door life. To-day I planted hollyhocks and sun- 
flower and some trailing vines. And my dear 
husband so enjoys the country air and fare. For 
dinner to-day eggs, bacon, roast ribs of lamb, 
spinach, potatoes, savory pie, Brentford pudding, 
and cheese cakes. 

Day by day we love Nature more, and also 
Nature's God. 

We rejoice in all the light that has come to us. 
We are most earnest and happy Quakers, and thor- 
oughly believe in our great principles. 

I know the Quakers are not the first people to 
seek to restore primitive Christianity. Many 
have tried earnestly before our day, but in vain 
have they struggled against the corruptions of the 
Church. I have read the story of the Friends of 
God in the thirteenth century and of the hope and 
faith of Mystics, Pietists, Quietists, Brethren of 
the Common Life, and others who have sought for 
God in their own peculiar ways. Yes, and there 
were the Waldenses of Italy and the Albigenses 
of Southern France. And then we do not forget 
those separating and seeking people called the 
Familists, the Seekers, the Antinomians, and the 



58 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Anabaptists, who have sought each most earnestly 
to revive a spiritual life in a dying church, but I 
believe that we Quakers have come nearest to 
original Christianity in its most ancient and sim- 
ple form — the Christianity as it existed in the 
early days of the apostles before the Church had 
converted the great empire of Rome and in return 
had been woefully corrupted by it. 

The dear George Fox stayed with us to-day, 
and told us some interesting stories. He gave 
us an account of his visit to Oliver Cromwell. 
He had been brought by Captain Drury to the 
Mermaid at Charing Cross and lodged there. 
Everywhere I went, he said, I warned people of 
the day of the Lord. One morning Captain 
Drury brought me to the Protector himself at 
Whitehall. It was in the morning before he was 
dressed. When I came in, I was moved to say, 
"Peace be to this house," and I exhorted him to 
keep in the fear of God. I spoke much to him of 
truth, and a great deal of discourse I had with 
him about religion, wherein he carried himself 
very moderately. As I spoke he several times said 
that it was very good, and it was truth. Many 
more words I had with him, but people coming 
in, I drew a little back. As I was turning, he 



A QUAKER WEDDING 59 

caught me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes 
said, "Come again to my house, for if I and thou 
were but an hour of the day together, we should 
be nearer one to the other," adding that he wished 
me no more ill than he did to his own soul. Then 
I was brought into a great hall, where the Pro- 
tector's gentlemen were to dine. I asked them 
what they brought me thither for. They said it 
was by the Protector's order that I might dine 
with them. I bid them let the Protector know 
I would not eat of his bread nor drink of his drink. 
When Cromwell heard of it, he said, "Now I see 
there is a people risen whom I cannot win either 
with gifts, honors, offices, or places, but all other 
sects are peoples I can." 

He also told of his last visit to the prison where 
that strange prophet of God, James Naylor, was, 
who had such a singular delusion. 

It was in Exeter jail, dear George Fox said, 
that I spoke to James Naylor, but his mind was 
dark. I admonished him in love, but he was 
set in his ways, and resisted the power of God. 
You may know that James Naylor was one of the 
earliest to receive the truth that I declared, and 
he manifested at the first extraordinary gifts of 
wisdom and power in preaching. But soon he 



6o A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

was assailed by spiritual pride and the snare of 
silly admiring women. One day, under a strong 
delusion, he rode into Bristol on horseback, his 
followers leading his horse, and the women spread- 
ing their scarfs and handkerchiefs before him, and 
the whole company shouting hosannas, and some 
kissed his feet, and he allowed it. He did this, 
he confessed, as a symbol of Christ, who liveth in 
him. But the hearts of all true Friends were 
grieved. The country was scandalized, and Par- 
liament took the matter up. James Naylor was 
accused and condemned as a blasphemer. I tried 
to save him as others did, but naught availed. 
He was put in the pillory, in the Palace yard, 
Westminster, whipped by a hangman through the 
London streets, his tongue was bored through with 
a hot iron, and his forehead branded with a letter 
B. Then they took him back to Bristol and he 
was driven through that city on horseback, with 
his face backward, publicly whipped, and then 
kept in prison at hard labor. I am glad to say 
that James Naylor fully repented in prison, and 
was delivered from his great delusion, and just 
before his death, in 1660, he spoke these remark- 
able words — so beautiful that I record them in 
love — which I have heard from several who lis- 



A QUAKER WEDDING 61 

tened to them: "There is a spirit which I feel 
that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any 
wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope 
to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to out- 
live all wrath and contention, and to weary out 
all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a na- 
ture contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all 
temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it con- 
ceives none in thought to any other. If it be be- 
trayed, it bears it; for its ground and spring is 
the mercy and forgiveness of God. Its crown is 
meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned. 
It takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with 
contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. 
In God alone it can rejoice, though none else re- 
gard it, or can own its own life. It is conceived 
in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity 
it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. 
It never rejoiceth, but through sufferings; for 
with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it 
alone ; being forsaken. I have fellowship therein, 
with those who lived in dens and desolate places 
in the earth; who through death obtained this 
resurrection, and eternal, holy life!" Thus died 
my friend and follower, James Naylor — only 
forty-four years old — a wonderful man, a gifted 



62 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

soul, but a warning to all against the perils of 
spiritual pride. He was one who came up out of 
great tribulation but at last entered into a holy 
life. 

So spake dear George Fox to us, and I thought 
as I listened how strange and cruel it is that for 
delusions of belief, or for strange opinions, a man 
should be so persecuted as was the unfortunate 
James Naylor. I rejoiced that I was numbered 
with a people who have never persecuted for opin- 
ion's sake. 

Dear George Fox is our chief apostle in the new 
faith. He is, as I see him, a strong character and 
yet most lovable withal. He had little educa- 
tion and yet he preaches like a prophet. His 
father was a weaver and he himself as a boy was a 
sheep-herder and is now a cobbler. When he was 
about nineteen the Spirit seized upon him. "I 
fasted much," he said, "walked abroad in solitary 
places many days and often took my Bible and sat 
in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came 
on and frequently in the night walked mournfully 
about by myself, for" — I heard him say — "I 
was a man of sorrows in the time of the first work- 
ing of the Lord in me. Though my exercises and 
troubles were very great, yet were they not so con- 



A QUAKER WEDDING 63 

tinued but that I had some intermissions and was 
sometimes brought into a wonderful heavenly joy 
that I thought I had been in Heaven itself." 

Such is dear George Fox who has become the 
prophet of our faith. He has made himself a suit 
of leather and preaches wherever he goes the 
strong truths that God put into his soul. He re- 
jects all the forms of religion he finds around him. 
He wanders all over England; he is stoned by 
mobs and imprisoned by magistrates, but gradu- 
ally many begin to be drawn to him and to feel 
that much of what he teaches is the truth. They 
feel the wonderful power and spirit of the man, 
as I do — the courage and force of his character 
and the homely beauty of his words. 

George Fox is, as I feel, a zealot for the Lord, 
a giant in bodily strength, a huge-muscled, strong- 
voiced preacher of the open air, mighty in mental 
boldness and moral courage. He is a strange 
genius, an uneducated people's prophet, a seer of 
visions, a worker of miracles, a hot-headed icono- 
clast and yet at the same time a tender soul and a 
lovable nature. His apostolic mission is to 
preach freedom of conscience, equal access for 
every soul to the inner life of God, and that to 
every man comes his own personal revelation of 



64 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

the truth which he must follow as he follows God. 
I think George Fox has a command of language 
that is miraculous — words seem to pour forth from 
his lips with a fervor and eloquence that always 
command attention and often touch the heart, and 
when lately he found that he needed Latin and 
Greek in his work he studied these and also He- 
brew, and conquered them. And he was not yet 
thirty years of age when he did this. I admire 
him greatly. 

George Fox makes his living as a cobbler and 
his leather coat and breeches make him free of 
fashions and tailors and also enable him better to 
stand the hard usage which he constantly receives. 
He is a rough prophet, as it seems to me, according 
to the order of Amos the herdsman of Tekoa. He 
is a man of the plain people as most of the 
prophets and apostles were, but he has keen eyes 
and deep vision. He astonishes and awes me. 

What we Friends stand for, as I have written 
before in this journal, is very simple. I repeat, — 
we are trying to restore the primitive spirit and 
usage of the Church of Christ. We are trying 
in all things to be guided by the inner light which 
we believe is Christ revealed to every man and 



A QUAKER WEDDING 65 

we will not bow to any outward authority or tra- 
dition in spiritual things. We will not take oaths, 
for the Scriptures command us — "Swear not at 
all." Our men will not remove their hats in def- 
erence to royalty or nobility or any man, for we 
consider all men equal and we uncover our heads 
only unto God. We use the plain language, "thee 
and thou," without titles of rank for we believe 
that all else savors of vanity and foolish fashion. 
We do not love churches, or rituals, or sacra- 
ments, for we see that these things have so often 
blinded men to true religion. We believe in wor- 
shiping God according to the dictate of our own 
conscience without form or ceremony, but in wor- 
shiping sincerely in spirit and in truth. And for 
these simple principles of primitive Christianity 
— as I have tried to state them, and as I have 
heard our ministers preach them — already we 
have greatly suffered. Yet our testimony has 
gone on. 

One letter I remember we sent to Justice Flem- 
ing who was an old friend of ours and had been 
so kind to me when I visited at his home years be- 
fore in Westmoreland. We heard that even he 
had been harsh to the Quakers as a magistrate, 
and we wrote a strong letter of remonstrance. I 



66 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

was so pleased with my dear Will for concluding 
it in these courtly and beautiful words — "How- 
ever different I am from other men concerning re- 
ligion, I know no religion which is worth anything 
that destroys courtesy, civility and kindness." 



Here at Rickmansworth in the midst of this 
happy thought and happy work, the Lord sent us 
some of His best gifts. Four children were born 
to us. Our first, Gulielma Maria, lived only a 
few weeks and was buried at Jordans. Then 
came a beautiful gift of twins, William and Mar- 
garet Mary, who also were taken early and are 
sleeping under the trees of Jordans. Finally 
came my dear boy Springett, who still lives and 
promises so much with his strong little body and 
his bright eyes and heavenly smile. 

As I first clasped this dear baby boy to my 
breast, we called the child Springett after my he- 
roic father. Now we looked through the lovely 
southern shires for a permanent home. None 
seemed to us so charming as our own estate of 
Worminghurst In Sussex, a high and healthful 
spot with a park and fine forest, and the air kept 
fresh and sweet by the wind from the nearby sea. 



A QUAKER WEDDING 67 

So we removed hither, and soon grew to love it 
dearly. Here on this noble Sussex down we 
nursed our dear little Springett and dreamed noble 
dreams. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW ARCADIA 

'*TT THAT a charming woman my young wife 
y T is," said my dear husband to me this 
morning with a smile and a kiss. And these 
words have abided with me all the day like a 
benediction. 

Our house at Worminghurst is a long, irregular 
two story building, part wood and part brick, with 
a roof of old tiles that have lost their color and are 
curiously variegated with green and yellow moss. 
The eaves are full of birds' nests built in them, 
and much honeysuckle grows up to the roofs, and 
there are great and little gables and huge chim- 
ney stacks. There are pretty casements and many 
charming lattice windows. My chamber is sweet 
with lavender and the hangings are also white 
and pretty. We have a beautiful great meadow, 
full of king's cups and blue bells and there 
are hawthorn hedges. Sheep are in the fields, bees 
in the honeysuckle and a little rippling rivulet 

68 



THE NEW ARCADIA 69 

flows continuously along the edge of the lawn. It 
is delightful here in the warm sun, and we have 
such pure air, with the scent of the meadow-sweet 
and the new mown hay. And listen! the lambs 
bleating and the larks singing their morning hymn. 

My dear Will has a strong body and wholesome 
appetite for which he always thanks God. He 
has never had any illness, but is thoroughly sound 
and vigorous in heart and life, and can endure all 
sort of hardships, imprisonment, pestilential dun- 
geons, and adventurings into disease with im- 
punity. He is of a sanguine habit, always cheer- 
ful and hopeful which brings him comfortably 
through many a hard time of anxiety and disap- 
pointment. 

My husband loves the ancient classics as I do, 
for I studied them so long and pleasantly with 
Thomas Ellwood, my tutor, who, as I have men- 
tioned, was the scholar and amanuensis of John 
Milton. I love to help Will to find the quota- 
tions and citations from the ancient classics with 
which he adorns many of his books and pamphlets. 

Perchance you may know that he does not sell 
his books, but prints them at his own expense and 
gives them away to whomsoever may wish to read 
them. He has never made a penny from his 



70 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

books but considers them as part of his ministry, 
for he would serve the Lord, not merely by word 
of mouth but also by the printed page, which 
sometimes, as he says, may go further and last 
longer than the breath of his lips. 

I think my husband loves theology and phi- 
losophy more than he likes business. Often he is 
not as careful in money affairs as I could wish and 
he trusts people so generously and implicitly that 
sometimes he is grossly deceived. 

To-day gathered a handful of cherries for baby, 
who is growing finely and walking. He loves to 
steal into the dairy and dip his fingers into the 
cream. I have a new dress — brown taffeta, 
garded with black velvet and all in a studied and 
rich plainness. Had a happy time to-day pre- 
paring cakes, sweet meats and fruits for the little 
company to-morrow night. 

My husband told me to-day of one who has 
meant much in his life, the noble soul and 
heavenly-minded Edward Burrough, who was a 
friend of George Fox and had ended his days in 
Newgate about 1662, a prisoner and martyr of 
the truth. These were some of the stories that he 



THE NEW ARCADIA 71 

told me which he had learned from the dear 
George Fox himself. One evening Edward Bur- 
rough was passing near a place where some per- 
sons were amusing themselves by wrestling with 
each other, and he observed a strong and dexter- 
ous man who had thrown three opponents and was 
now challenging in vain a fourth to enter the lists 
with him. Then Burrough himself stepped forth 
into the ring. The wrestler was greatly surprised 
to see before him a young man of a composed and 
solemn demeanor instead of the usual countenance 
of his own class, and he wondered what kind of 
combat was about to take place. Burrough made 
no effort to wrestle, but he spoke to the wrestler 
with such sweetness and power that he pierced 
him to the heart, and won the admiration and at- 
tention of all the multitude about him, for this 
Edward Burrough was a breaker of stony hearts 
and was sometimes called the son of thunder. 

Another story was this. He said that the 
funeral of Oliver Cromwell was being solemnized 
with very great pomp, and on this very day, Ed- 
ward Burrough came riding into London, not 
knowing anything of what was going on. As he 
reached Charing Cross, he beheld a great multi- 
tude thronging exceedingly, the streets being filled 



72 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

as far as he could see, and an abundance gazing 
from the windows, and upon the balconies and 
housetops. There were also guards of horse and 
foot, that stopped him and told him that he might 
not pass that way. 

At length he perceived an image of Cromwell 
richly adorned, being carried by the funeral pro- 
cession toward Westminster, and the sight of this 
image was like an arrow that pierced his breast. 
It seemed to him like idolatry to honor a mere man 
thus, and he was filled with the indignation of the 
Lord. "Alas, for him," said he, "who was once 
a great instrument in the hands of the Lord to 
break down many idolatrous images ! Have they 
now made a costly image of this man himself? 
And his soldiers and the multitudes of London 
gazing upon it and doing it reverence'?" He at- 
tempted to ride through the guards and the multi- 
tude to give his testimony against it, such was his 
zeal, but they drove him back. 

My husband liked exceedingly what Edward 
Burrough wrote concerning the testimony of 
Friends when he said, "Oh, Lord God everlasting, 
do thou judge our cause ! Do thou make it mani- 
fest in thy due season to all the world that we are 
thy people; that we love thee above all; that we 



THE NEW ARCADIA 73 

fear thy name more than all; that we love right- 
eousness and hate iniquity, and that we now suf- 
fer for thy holy name and for thy honor and 
justice and for thy truth and holiness! Oh, 
Lord, thou knowest we are resolved to perish 
rather than to lose one grain thereof." 

It was a constant inspiration to my husband 
that Edward Burrough had once said to his bosom 
friend, Frances Howgill, "I can freely go to the 
city of London and lay down my life for a testi- 
mony of that truth which I have declared through 
the power and spirit of God." 

But I think my dear husband most often re- 
ferred to and most deeply loved the stirring words 
of Edward Burrough's latest hours, when, after 
enduring the fiercest kind of persecution that was 
raging against the poor Quakers, and after eight 
months of miserable prison life in Newgate, he ex- 
claimed in deep devotedness of soul — "I have 
preached the gospel freely in this city and will give 
up my life for the gospel's sake, and now, oh, 
Lord, open my heart and see if it be not right be- 
fore thee. Thou hast loved me when I was in 
the womb, and I have loved thee faithfully in 
my generation." Edward Burrough, he told me, 
was only eight and twenty when he died in New- 



74 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

gate, but he left on all who knew him a wonderful 
impression of the holy boldness of his heart, and 
the uncorruptible singleness of his soul in the 
cause of Truth. He was a prophet of the Lord, 
recorded in the Book of Life, among those of 
whom the world is not worthy. 

One of my husband's interesting pamphlets re- 
cently written, is called, "A Brief Examination of 
Liberty Spiritual." It takes up the matter of how 
the inner life should be followed and whether per- 
sons in their private capacity ought not to submit 
their revelations to the church in its collective ca- 
pacity before setting forth and holding too stren- 
uously to their own particular views. He be- 
lieved that this would be a guard against fanati- 
cism and strange doctrine and practice, and would 
tend to determine more clearly the mind of the 
Spirit. It seemeth also to me that this is exceed- 
ingly valuable. 

Will talks even better than he writes — as I 
often say — although his writings are sententious 
and weighty. But many times in his conversa- 
tion there is a wit and humor which he rarely 
allows to find place upon his written page. His 
sermons and pamphlets are more diffused than his 
talk, which is sharp and quick. Sometimes it 



THE NEW ARCADIA 75 

seemed to me that his written discourse savors too 
much of the habitual generalities which so many 
scholars and divines of our day use in their formal 
discourses. 

In his ordinary speaking there is a geniality and 
a bluff heartiness that makes him a most pleasant 
and agreeable companion. He has seen so much 
of the world in his travels, he has known so many 
famous people and he is so interested in life that 
he talks with much knowledge and with vigorous 
spirit. 

My husband wore his sword for some time 
after he became a Quaker. Once he consulted 
George Fox concerning the matter who said — "I 
advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst." 
Some time afterward George Fox saw that he wore 
it no longer and asked him — ''William, where is 
thy sword?" And he simply answered — "I have 
taken thy advice; I wore it as long as I could." 

He never wears the extreme Quaker dress, but 
always his garments are simple and becoming as 
those of a sensible well-born gentleman should be. 

Some think that he has excess of levity of spirit, 
but to me it seems merely a sober cheerfulness. 
Some think that he is facetious in conversation, 
and our good Dean Swift says that he talks very 



76 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

agreeably and with great spirit. As for me he is 
just my merry and handsome gentleman with the 
heart of a prince and the soul of a prophet of God. 
I always think that my husband does much in 
refining and systematizing the Quaker truth. 
Dear George Fox is much inclined to visions and 
miracles and often rhapsodizes, but my husband 
inclines not to these things, but to strong sense 
and sober reason and he puts all his stress upon 
the simple faith of the Friends and its harmony 
with the primitive Christianity of the first three 
centuries. George Fox is the prophet of the new 
movement, but my husband to my mind is the 
apostle and scholar to give it wider scope and 
standing among thinking people. 

It is wonderful what absolute faith Will has in 
our Quaker gospel and how he feels sure that God 
will use us to save the world. I remember a part 
of a letter which he wrote to the vice-chancellor 
of his old university at Oxford who is now en- 
gaged in persecuting the Quaker students. My 
husband was truly indignant and wrote in strong 
words — "Shall the multiplied oppressions which 
thou continuest to heap upon innocent people for 
their peaceable religious meetings, pass unre- 



THE NEW ARCADIA 77 

garded by the eternal God'? Dost thou think to 
escape His fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance 
for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor 
children? I tell thee, no. Better were it for 
thee hadst thou never been born. Poor mush- 
room, wilt thou war against the Lord and lift up 
thyself in battle against the Almighty? Canst 
thou frustrate his holy purposes and bring his de- 
termination to naught? He has decreed to exalt 
himself by us and to propagate his gospel to the 
ends of the earth?" I always love my dear 
Will's boldness in calling that eminent person- 
age "poor mushroom." It is such human anger, 
but I love even more his vision of the mission of 
us Quakers as he says in those closing words so 
confidently: "God has decreed to exalt himself 
by us and to propagate his gospel to the ends of 
the earth." 

And now in these days dream after dream seems 
to become reality, and it is a joy to me to see how 
quickly the good Lord leads us on. Will told me 
that his thoughts first turned toward America 
when he was a boy and his father had won vic- 
tories for England in the Island of Jamaica. Ac- 
cording to naval usage his father ought to have 



78 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

received a large estate from that conquered island. 
We think that perhaps it may come yet for the 
Admiral's claims against the government are still 
unsettled. Often at Wanstead and in the Navy 
Gardens where they also lived the New World 
had often been talked over. While he was at 
Oxford the projects of a new Oceana or Utopia 
had vividly come to his fancy. At the yearly 
meetings of his own religious society the settle- 
ment of Friends in Jamaica, or New England 
or on the Delaware had been frequently discussed. 
The journey he had made recently into Holland 
and Germany had aroused the gathering enthusi- 
asm of the years. At Amsterdam, at Leyden, in 
the cities of the middle Rhine, his imagination had 
been stirred by stories that he had heard from 
those who had crossed the Atlantic. 



And now, as he came to me to-day he told me 
that he had become a trustee of a new settlement 
in the New World, the province of West Jersey. 
The region between the Hudson and the Delaware 
had been given to Lord Berkeley and Sir George 
Carteret. They sold it to two Friends and when 
it became financially involved on their hands, 



THE NEW ARCADIA 79 

they turned it over to trustees. He was asked to 
become a trustee and really to manage and settle 
the affairs of this province. It seems that some 
colonists have come from New Haven and have 
made a Puritan settlement on the Passaic River 
which they called Newark, hoping to make it a 
place of refuge for the oppressed and to establish 
there the covenant of grace in Puritan ways; 
while the Quakers, at least the few who have 
reached there, have established a small colony in 
the west of the province in a fertile and pleasant 
spot on the Delaware which they call Salem, the 
city of peace. 

I hear that John Fenwick, one of the Quaker 
agents, purchased the tract for the settlement 
called Salem in West Jersey for the following 
gifts to the Indians — 30 match-coats, 20 guns, 30 
kettles, 1 great kettle, 30 pair of hose, 20 fathoms 
of duffels, 30 petticoats, 30 narrow hoes, 30 bars 
of lead, 15 small barrels of flour, 70 knives, 30 
axes, 70 combs, 60 pair of tobacco tongs, 60 pair 
of scissors, 60 tin-shaw looking-glasses, 120 awl- 
blades, 120 fish hooks, 2 grasps of red paint, 120 
needles, 60 tobacco boxes, 120 pipes, 200 bells, 
100 Jew's harps and 6 ankers of rum. This is so 
curious that I have recorded it. 



8o A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

How deeply interested in the province of West 
Jersey has my dear husband become, and how 
many are our good talks together and how fre- 
quent the trips to London to consult with friends I 
Not only has he in mind Sir Thomas More's 
Utopia and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia but he 
has studied well the writings of Algernon Sidney 
and believes in the free government of Pericles 
and Scipio. He knows also the new constitution 
which the philosopher John Locke has made for 
the new province of Carolina and it has impressed 
him greatly. Above all, George Fox, prophet and 
apostle of our faith, has helped to give him vision 
of things unseen and also a passionate belief in 
individual men and their worth and rights. Be- 
sides, as I have already written. Will was brought 
up under the sturdy influences of the Puritans in 
his boyhood days and has breathed with his earliest 
breath the strong desires for liberty and justice for 
all men. He longs to see in America what seems 
at present impossible in England— a religious and 
fraternal commonwealth where human rights are 
respected and cherished and where spiritual life 
and growth are encouraged and inspired by abso- 
lute freedom of worship. Might not this new 
province of West Jersey into whose interests the 



THE NEW ARCADIA 81 

Lord has thrust him become the fulfillment of his 
dream'? 

So he works enthusiastically on this project, set- 
tling the tangled affairs of the province as wisely 
as possible and giving up the portion called East 
Jersey to the agents of Sir George Carteret for the 
sake of peace. For the rest of the province he has 
made a noble constitution and seen to its adoption, 
securing the rights of civil and religious liberty 
and justice for all, just what he would have in 
England to-day if he should have his own way. 
He has also organized emigration and sent out 
two hundred and thirty Quakers in the good ship 
Kent. 

A strange incident, he told me, happened just 
as this vessel was about to sail. The ship was 
moored high up in the Thames. At the hour of 
her departure the emigrants went on board accom- 
panied by their friends, and the master of the ship 
was just on the point of weighing anchor amid the 
tears and embraces of relatives about to part for- 
ever when a gilded barge was seen to be gliding 
over the smooth waters toward them. Some one 
in princely attire hailed them and asked them the 
name of the ship and whither bound. Being an- 
swered, he asked if all the emigrants were Quakers. 



82 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

They answered yes, and he gave them his blessing 
and pulled away. It was the King. 

Other ships soon followed, and Friends be- 
gan another town in West Jersey which they 
called Burlington. Here in the forest under a 
sail cloth — as we have heard by letters — they as- 
sembled for their first religious meeting. The 
Indians soon came from their hunting grounds and 
found the new strangers were men of peace, with 
presents for them as brothers, and purses to pay 
instead of muskets to force. "You are our 
brothers," said the Sachems when they had heard 
their proposals, "and we will live like brothers 
with you. We will have a broad path for you 
and us to walk in. If an Englishman falls asleep 
in this path, the Indians shall pass him by and say 
he is an Englishman, he is asleep, let him alone. 
The path shall be plain. There shall not be in it 
a stump to hurt his feet." 

So combes the news to us in our fair new home 
at Worminghurst. It is a pleasant home here. 
To-day we had curds and cream and such luscious 
strawberries from our own beds. We have a fish 
pond here at Worminghurst. It is a pleasure 
oftentimes to throw crumbs to the fishes and watch 



THE NEW ARCADIA 83 

them, as they come to the surface of the water. 
All is so beautiful in our gardens on this Sussex 
down and yet we also rejoice in the Lord's bless- 
ing on this new Arcadia in the New World. 
Some day perchance we may see this wondrous 
land — mayhap as beautiful as our own — ^per- 
chance we may live there where (the most beauti- 
ful thing of all) men are brothers and worship is 
free and justice shall be given to all men. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PLEASANT DAYS AT WORMINGHURST 

THIS morning I spent in the garden bower 
with the bees buzzing in the hives near me. 
It is a pleasant music in my ears. What kindly 
gifts do these cheerful bees oft give us for our 
supper — delicious new honey in the comb. How 
good it is with the bread hot from the oven. 

I wonder where my husband received his deep 
religious turn, for his father and mother were 
neither of them over-inclined to religion. Some- 
times he tells me with a smile that it doubtless 
comes from an old monk of the Abbey of Glas- 
tonbury in Somersetshire who was an ancestor of 
his. For when the monasteries were dissolved 
under Henry VIII, this monk was granted some 
of the Abbey land, and married, and became his 
family progenitor. More seriously he says, "I 
am religious because the Lord has chosen me and 

&4 



DAYS AT WORMINGHURST 85 

called me to his service." And this is true for 
although he has the heroism and the indomitable 
will of his father, and the genial cheerful tempera- 
ment of his mother, yet there is in him also that 
marvelous spiritual power and fervor which comes 
only and directly from the Lord. 

These preaching journeys which we take to- 
gether are a joy to us both. On one of these jour- 
neys we visited twenty-one towns in twenty-one 
days. The Lord sealed our labors and travels ac- 
cording to the desire of our souls, with his heavenly 
refreshment and living power, and the Word of 
life reached so many and so consoled our own 
hearts that we returned with the blessings of peace 
which is a reward beyond all earthly treasure. 

How pleasant and seemly all the duties of my 
station. I love to travel with my husband as he 
goes preaching the message of truth. I love to 
consider the poor and go among them, reading to 
one, and carrying food and medicine to another, 
and helping all of them as I can. Such simple 
ways and means as I have seem to bring to them 
blessings and to me pleasure. 

I love all natural and wholesome things. I 
love to hear the village children at play. All 



86 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

sounds of human merriments, innocent and gay, 
are to me the sweetest music. 



This is our usual course of life here in the coun- 
try at Worminghurst, and I find it simple and 
wholesome and full of refreshment. We rise 
about seven in winter, and five, sometimes earlier, 
in summer, and first of all as soon as dressing is 
over, we read a chapter of the Bible together, talk- 
ing a little of the truths which it brings to us, and 
then a season of silence before the Lord, some- 
times broken by a brief audible prayer. Our 
breakfast at eight or earlier is a good wheaten 
loaf, fresh butter and eggs and a large jug of milk 
with sometimes a rasher of toasted bacon. Often 
I am out in the garden before breakfast to pick a 
posy to lay on my dear husband's plate. After 
breakfast until noon I look after my maids and 
the household stores, and oftentimes have a chance 
for my needlework. We dine at twelve o'clock, 
always on simple wholesome dishes, dressed with 
neatness and care, and ending with cheese and 
pippins. 

There is a short season of devotion before every 
meal. This is somewhat longer just before din- 
ner when some portion of the Bible is read aloud. 



DAYS AT WORMINGHURST 87 

together with chapters from the "Book of Mar- 
tyrs," or from the writings of Friends. After tea, 
at five, the servants come to us and give an account 
of their doings during the day and receive their 
orders for the morrow. We always tell them that 
they are to avoid loud discourse and troublesome 
noises in the house; that they are not to absent 
themselves without leave; they are not to go to 
any public house but upon business; and they are 
not to loiter or enter into unprofitable talk, while 
on any errand. 

From six to eight, many friends and visitors 
come to see us and oftentimes we have music — 
somewhat different from many Friends — with a 
light supper afterwards. Then some reading 
from the fine old classics, or some religious poetry, 
and a chapter from the Bible and prayer, and a 
happy day is ended. 



My friend Thomas Ellwood hath married Mary 
Ellis (1669), and taken up his abode at Hunger 
Hill, not far from Beacon's Field, here in our 
Chalfont region. He hath lately writ a poetical 
"Directions to My Friend Inquiring the Way to 
My House" which is so pleasant that I copy it. 



88 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

"Two miles from Beaconsfield upon the road 

To Amersham, just where the way grows broad, 

A little spot there is called Larkin's Green, 

Where on a bank some fruit trees may be seen; 

In midst of which, on the sinister hand, 

A little cottage covertly doth stand; 

'Soho !' the people out, and then inquire 

For Hunger Hill ; it lies a little higher. 

But if the people should from home be gone, 

Ride up the bank some twenty paces on, 

And at the orchard's end thou may'st perceive 

Two gates together hung. The nearest leave. 

The furthest take, and straight the hill ascend. 

The path leads to the home where dwells thy friend." 

And now my dear husband feels the loving hand 
of God upon him to go forth into further apostolic 
labors and especially to visit and counsel again 
with the seekers after truth in the Netherlands and 
Germany. 

It is iive full and happy years since we have 
been married. Our little Springett blesses the 
home with his bright life and is a healthy boy and 
my own health is excellent. So I will bid my hus- 
band go with my blessing and visit again those 
needy fields of the Dutch and Rhenish towns 
where he had been six years before. The Friends 
there are now being severely persecuted and others 
in Germany are anxiously inquiring the way to 



DAYS AT WORMINGHURST 89 

the light. A beautiful and tender letter from 
the Princess Elizabeth especially impresses me. 
She also seeks for further light. I remember that 
she is the daughter of Frederick, Prince Palatine 
of the Rhine and King of Bohemia, and she also 
has the honor of being grand daughter to our own 
King James the First. If this eminent lady de- 
sires the truth and would come into the full light, 
how much might she not effect for the poor perse- 
cuted Quakers of her realm. 

So I will send my dear Will away for this three 
months' journey and a wonderful journey I am 
sure it will be. Much I will doubtless learn from 
his loving letters to be sent to me by every post, 
and much more by word of mouth in those long 
twilight talks which we will have together after 
he comes back. 

Have learned also that this Princess Elizabeth 
of Bohemia lived with her mother, the Queen of 
Bohemia, at the Hague for some years and was in- 
tensely interested in all lines of knowledge. 
Court life is distasteful to her, but she seeks the 
acquaintance of thinkers, poets, scientists and 
theologians. She is a high-spirited and intellec- 
tual woman with an uncommon taste for good 
books and for pleasant adventures. Am told that 



90 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

sometimes to break the monotony of life she has 
dressed up as a woman of the peasant class and 
with a sister or friend embarked on a passenger 
boat to Haarlem, Delft, or Leyden to see the world 
in unconventional ways. The Frenchman Des- 
cartes bears testimony that he found Princess 
Elizabeth exceedingly sympathetic and he was so 
impressed by her mental capacity and power of 
concentration that at her invitation to teach her to 
think, he gave her a course of mental training in 
methodical fashion and also dedicated to her his 
book on the principles of philosophy. It is to this 
excellent woman already famous that my husband 
is to make pilgrimage and I hope will find her in- 
tensely interested in all that he can tell her of the 
Quakers and spiritual things. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE VISIT TO THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH 

1 LEARN, from my dear husband's letters to 
me, that as he had planned he sailed from 
Harwich on fifth month 22nd, 1677/ With him 
was our chief apostle, the dear George Fox, and 
our learned friend Robert Barclay and other 
friends, making a goodly and apostolic company. 
A great parcel of Quaker books and tracts they 
took with them in the French, Dutch and German 
tongue. On the ship's deck they held meetings 
and some of the passengers and sailors were deeply 
touched. When they drew near to land, so eager 
were my husband and Robert Barclay to disembark 
that although it was near nightfall they stepped 
into a small boat and went ashore, hoping to hold 
an evening meeting at Brill. But the sun went 
down before they reached the city, the gates were 
closed and that night they had to sleep in a fisher- 

1 This was May, originally third month in the old style. — 
Editor. 

91 



92 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

man's boat. In the morning they went to Rotter- 
dam and held meetings immediately. George Fox 
must needs be interpreted sentence by sentence to 
the people but my dear husband could speak in 
the Dutch tongue plainly to the people for he had 
studied it years before. Many other meetings 
were held in towns on the way to Amsterdam, es- 
pecially at Leyden and at Haarlem. And their 
journey seemed a triumph of the gospel. 

At Amsterdam they held many meetings and 
forwarded the work and discipline of Friends. 
And at this city also hearing of the sufferings of 
Friends in Dantzig in Poland my husband was 
desired to draw up a petition to the King of 
Poland, the noble Sobieski, which he did, quoting 
to him a saying of King Stephen, one of his royal 
ancestors, who said of himself — "I am a king of 
men, but not of consciences ; king of bodies, not of 
souls." 

The great event of this journey, however, as 
his dear letters tell, were the conferences with the 
Princess Elizabeth. While George Fox remained 
with the Friends at Amsterdam, my husband and 
Robert Barclay went on to Herwerden where the 
Princess Elizabeth kept her court. She received 
them with courtesy and affection. They stayed at 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH 93 

an inn in the town, but visited the court of the 
Princess daily. Often they began a conference 
at seven in the morning and continued until eleven 
o'clock. Then after a midday meal they came 
again at two and continued until seven, and after 
tea with the Princess they sometimes continued 
until ten or eleven at night. She was eager to 
know all and was hungry for the truth of God. 
These were blessed times in the Lord. The ser- 
vants and strangers were also invited to these 
meetings and many were convinced of the truth. 
Even at the inn where my husband lodged, the 
innkeeper and some of the other guests were deeply 
touched by his words. One afternoon when the 
Princess had with her the Countess of Homes and 
her sister, and a French lady of quality, they 
eagerly asked for an account of my husband's per- 
sonal religious life and experience from the first, 
and he told them the story beginning with his 
boyhood days. He talked nearly the whole after- 
noon but was only half done at supper time. The 
Princess bade him remain with her and her spe- 
cial friends, and after supper begged him to go on 
with his experiences which he did until nearly 
eleven o'clock at night. They seemed strangely 
moved by the story. 



94 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

The next day being First day they held a meet- 
ing with the Princess and her family at two o'clock 
in the afternoon. It proved a wonderful time. 
At its close, as my dear husband told me, the 
Princess came to him and took him by the hand 
and drawing him aside told him of the sense of 
the power and presence of God she had felt in the 
meeting. Suddenly she stopped and turning .her- 
self to the window she broke forth with great emo- 
tion and sobs — "I cannot speak, my heart is full 
— " clasping her hands to her heart. My hus- 
band spoke to her softly of the sympathy and 
compassions of the Lord, and after a time of si- 
lence she asked him earnestly — "Will you not 
come hither again? Pray come here as ye re- 
turn out of Germany." Surely she is near the 
kingdom of God. 

The next morning Robert Barclay set out to 
join dear George Fox at Amsterdam, while my 
husband and George Keith journeyed in an open 
v/agon to Frankfort. It took them a week along 
bad roads and through heavy rains. Here they 
met some noble disciples of the gospel, such as 
Franz Pastorius, and to them my husband opened 
his heart concerning his dream of a free and 
Christian State in America, urging them to go 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH 95 

hither if God opened a way. And here also he 
wrote a wonderful general epistle to the churches 
of Jesus throughout the world. Somehow he felt 
that the whole world was his field and that God 
was sending him to this work as truly as he sent 
the early apostles, and he wrote — "My friends and 
brethren, God hath laid upon you and us whom 
he hath honored with the new beginning of his 
great work in the world, the care both of this age 
and of the ages to come, that many may walk as 
they have us his followers for examples, yea the 
Lord God hath chosen you to place his name in 
you. The Lord hath intrusted you with his glory 
that you might hold it forth to all nations and 
that the generations unborn may call you blessed.'* 
I love to read again and again his fervent hope 
for this great land of Germany and I pray the 
Lord that it may come to pass in God's own good 
time. This is his hope — "I must tell you (he 
said) that there is a breathing, hungering, seeking 
people solitarily scattered up and down this great 
land of Germany to receive the testimony of light 
and life through us, and our desire is that God 
will put it into the hearts of many of his faithful 
witnesses to visit this country, where he hath a 
great seed of people to be gathered, that his work 



96 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

may go on in the earth till the whole world be 
filled with his glory." 

The travelers passed up the Rhine and through 
the city of Worms and then to Kirchheim and 
Mannheim. Down the river they went again to 
Cologne, all the while holding meetings and thence 
to Mulheim to visit the Countess of Falkenstein 
who was deeply interested in the new truth, but 
here a strange incident befell them. On their ar- 
rival at Duysburg near Mulheim they sought out 
Dr. Mastricht and told him that they sought an 
interview with the Countess of Falkenstein for 
whom they had a letter of introduction from the 
Princess Elizabeth. He told them that they were 
fortunate, for that very day the young Countess 
had left her father's castle and would spend the 
day across the river at her clergyman's home and 
there she would doubtless be glad to see them. 
They set out to make the visit and were about to 
cross the river when her father the Count of that 
region with his attendants came from the castle 
and noticing they were foreigners by their dress, he 
sent one of his retinue to inquire who they were, 
what they wanted and whither they were going. 
They replied that they were Englishmen traveling 
through the country. The messenger told them 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH 97 

that they were in the presence of the Graf von 
Falkenstein. But they firmly refused to give 
him the usual courtesy of uncovered head, and he 
was angry at what he considered a disrespect and 
ordered them out of his estates and dominion. It 
was already dusk, but the Count's men conducted 
them into a thick forest and left them to find their 
own way. The road being unknown to them they 
wandered for a long time and at length came to a 
cit)^ but its gates were shut and no sentinel re- 
plied, so they laid down outside the walls. At 
three o'clock in the morning they got up stiff with 
cold and walked about till five, comforting each 
other with assurance that a great day for Germany 
was at hand. After the Cathedral clock struck 
five the gates were open and they gained the shel- 
ter of an inn. They had failed to see the young 
Countess but they received from her a message by 
the hand of her page. My husband also wrote to 
the Count, her father, a letter of rebuke and ap- 
peal and in that letter (which I have in his own 
hand as he copied it) he wrote these words which 
I cherish greatly. They were an answer to the 
Count's scornful words — "We want no Quakers 
here." He told the Count what a true Quaker is 
in these words — "A true Quaker is one that trem- 



98 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

bleth at the word of the Lord, that worketh out 
his salvation with fear and trembling, and all the 
days of his appointed time waiteth in the light and 
grace of God; one that taketh up the daily cross 
that he may do the will of God manifested to him 
by the light of Jesus in his conscience and accord- 
ing to the precepts and examples in the Holy 
Scriptures of truth laid down by Jesus and his fol- 
lowers for the ages to come; one that loveth his 
enemies rather than feareth them, that blesseth 
those that curse him and prayeth for those that 
despitefuUy treat him. O that thou wert such a 
Quaker ! Then would temperance, mercy, justice, 
meekness, and the fear of the Lord dwell in thy 
heart and thy family and thy country." No one, 
to my mind, has told so much truth about us in 
such few words. 

Another incident of this journey was a singu- 
larly interesting visit to Jean de Labadie's com- 
pany at Wiewart where they had an interview 
with Ivon the present pastor and with the famous 
Anna Maria Van Schurman, a woman learned in 
philosophy and languages among the greatest in 
Europe. 

This noble woman is considered eminent as 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH 99 

artist, scholar and saint. She was born and lives 
in Holland and from her native city is called the 
Star of Utrecht. She counts among her friends 
the greatest scholars of her day and is visited by 
royalty. She speaks Latin, Greek, French and 
Italian and writes Hebrew and Syriac and has 
published an Ethiopian grammar. She is a friend 
of the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and she is 
really the prophetess of the religious order of the 
Labadists in the community where Jean de La- 
badie is the prophet. 

This servant of God, Jean de Labadie, is, as it 
seems to many and to me, one of the most re- 
markable men of his day. He was born in 1610 
and was educated at the Jesuit College and be- 
came a famous preacher in that order, but later 
he became a mystic and a Protestant and a 
preacher at Geneva, from thence he was called to 
Middelburg in Holland and again repeated his ex- 
traordinary success as a gifted preacher and ob- 
tained a large following, among them, as we said, 
the famous Anna Maria Van Schurmann, but his 
preaching became too liberal for the Calvinistic 
faith and he withdrew and founded a religious 
community. It was this community that my hus- 
band visited; although he said that he did not 



100 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

thoroughly approve of de Labadie, thinking him 
somewhat visionary, but the people themselves 
(he said) in many of their ideas most surprisingly 
resembled the Quakers, for they are seeking the 
primitive church and the apostolic spirit of faith 
and life. 

Finally they made another visit at Herwerden, 
the court of the Princess Elizabeth, before they 
left Germany. They had supper with the 
Princess and the Countess. They described this 
meal as a true supper, the hidden manna being 
manifested and the Lord's spiritual presence, even 
in the breaking of bread. On First day, meet- 
ings were held both morning and afternoon and 
there were wonderful revelations of grace. The 
next day the young princes, nephews to Princess 
Elizabeth, came to visit her and my husband had 
a long religious talk with one of them, the Count 
of Donau. All the company were deeply touched 
by this visit and its ministration. My husband 
felt, he told me, that the Princess Elizabeth was 
overwhelmed by divine grace and felt the Lord 
nearer to her than ever before; while the 
Countess reiterated in a tone of deep conviction — 
'11 faut que je rompe" — (I must break away, that 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH loi 

is, I must leave the Church). He felt that she 
would be obedient to the heavenly vision. In a 
letter to the Countess written shortly after, he 
gave her this counsel which I keep by me as ex- 
ceedingly beautiful and true: "Wouldst thou 
overcome the enemies of thy soul's peace, and en- 
joy the delightful presence of the Lord with thee? 
Then keep nothing back, let nothing be withheld 
that he calleth for. Be thou like the poor widow 
of old, who gave more into the treasury than all 
the rest, because they reserve the greatest part to 
themselves, but she gave all that she had. O 
blessed are they who make no bargains for them- 
selves, who have no reserves for self, neither con- 
sult with flesh and blood, nor in any sense conform 
to the least ceremony, but submit their wills in all 
things to the Lord. Read the mystery of life. I 
speak not of deserting or flinging away all out- 
ward substance but that thy heart may make God 
its treasure and never in anything of this lower 
world rest short of Christ, the eternal rest of all 
those of faith." 

And still another passage I admire greatly in a 
further letter to her. It is about "The Plant of 
Paradise," and runneth thus, and may well be the 
desire of every Friend — "I earnestly desire that 



102 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

thou mayst be more than conqueror, through the 
workings of the divine love in thy soul. Blessed 
are they who hold their fellowship in it. It is 
pure, harmless, patient, fervent and constant. It 
Cometh from God and leadeth all who receive it 
unto God. It can lay down its life for its 
friends; it will break through all difficulty and 
hath power to conquer death and the grave. This 
transcendeth the friendship of the world and its 
kindness is inviolable. Our purest faith worketh 
by this love. It trusteth him in the winds and in 
the earthquakes, in the fire and in the waters ; yea, 
when the floods come in even unto the soul, this 
despondeth not, neither murmureth. My dear 
friend, let this noble plant of paradise grow in thy 
heart. Wait upon the Lord that he may water 
it and shine upon it and make an hedge about it 
that thy whole heart may be replenished with the 
heavenly increase and fruits of it." 

He said as they talked with Princess Elizabeth 
and her friend the Countess, all deeply interested 
in the spiritual discussion of heavenly things, sud- 
denly they heard the rattling of a coach and their 
discourse was interrupted by the announcement a 
little later of the coming of callers. The 
Countess fetched a deep sigh, crying out — "O the 



VISIT TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH 103 

cumber and intanglements of this vain world! 
They hinder all good." As she spoke thus, said 
my husband, I looked steadfastly in her face and 
replied — "O come thou out of them !" 

Would God that she might come out, and so 
become the champion of the Quakers in Ger- 
many. But now my good husband's journey and 
work in Germany must end. For he is needed in 
England. On the voyage home from Rotterdam 
to Harwich he encountered a violent storm, and 
was at sea three days and three nights. The rain 
fell in torrents, the wind was dead set against 
them, the vessel sprang a leak and the crew la- 
bored at the pump night and day but could 
scarcely keep the hold from filling. At last he 
reached Harwich and leaving dear George Fox 
and the others to follow in a coach, my husband 
mounted the best horse he could find and hastened 
toward home. He had to stop at London in the 
service of the truth, but as quickly as he could he 
was off to Sussex and I heard the gallop of his 
horse afar off on the road. O how gladly we wel- 
comed him at Worminghurst I He had only been 
gone three months, but it seemed like three years 
before I saw his loving face again, and heard his 
kindly voice praising the Lord for bringing us to- 



104 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

gether again in safety and in peace. Little 
Springett crowed at the sight of him and he kissed 
the darling boy again and again. We had a 
sweet meeting together and our hearts were full 
of joy. 



CHAPTER IX 

FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 

SPENT the day in London. Always love to 
hear the strange street cries of — "Come, buy 
my green herbs! Old shoes for some brooms! 
New milk and curds from the dairy! Calfs- 
liver, tripe, and hot sheep's-feet !" Went to the 
noble Minster where King Harry Seventh's chapel 
is. Also to St. Paul's Cathedral. And the field 
of Finnsbury where they are practicing archery. 

Why are we called Quakers^ Some take it 
from the fact that our preachers tremble or quake 
as they speak. Others say that it is from the 
trembling or quaking which their speech com- 
pelleth in those who hear them. One old Crom- 
well ian soldier says, "I was struck with more ter- 
ror by the preaching of James Naylor, the Quaker, 
than I was at the battle of Dunbar." But how- 
ever the word comes, it surely means that our spirit 

105 



io6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

is earnest and fervent and certainly different from 
any easy or comfortable religion. 

I love that portrait of my dear Will, which 
hangs over the mantel here in our drawing-room 
at Worminghurst. 'Twas painted in Ireland 
when he was to be a soldier. He is clad in steel — 
strange garments for a Quaker — with lace at his 
throat. His dark hair is parted in the middle and 
hangs down in cavalier fashion over his shoulders. 
His eyes are large and clear and lustrous, with 
depth of intensity in them. His face is strong 
and serious, showing character and purpose. I 
am so proud that my soldier is now a soldier of 
peace with only the sword of the Spirit. 

And now for two years come strange leadings 
of the Lord, and my dear husband is much in the 
King's Court in London, and is often called Papist 
or Jesuit, but in spite of all misrepresentations and 
opposition he is unceasing in his labors for liberty 
of conscience in England. Nor did he despair 
until at last he was most grievously disappointed 
in his hopes for England by the case of Algernon 
Sidney. But let me tell the story. 

Liberty of conscience has been my husband's 



FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 107 

chief desire for years. This is his great conten- 
tion in all his struggles — the right to worship God 
according to the dictates of one's own conviction 
without interference by the State. He has found 
one powerful friend to sustain him in this fight, 
namely the Duke of York, brother to the reigning 
monarch, and through his encouragement he is 
much at court. The Duke of York, it is true, is 
a Catholic and has married a Catholic wife and is 
interested in getting an act of religious toleration 
because it would include Catholics as well as 
Quakers, but such would also benefit Puritans and 
Presbyterians, for they are all under the same 
restrictions and condemnations at this time as dis- 
senters and non-conformers. 

In order to further the cause there must be 
many weighty advocates of this desired religious 
tolerance and upon my husband as a man of stand- 
ing and a leading Quaker was put the task of se- 
curing good and strong supporters of this new 
measure. So he became a courtier, a frequenter of 
the galleries at Whitehall and a companion of the 
wits and ministers and favorites of the royal court. 
He lived in intimacy with the Duke of Ormande, 
a famous Catholic, and with Bishop Tillotson, an 
equally famous Protestant. Among his friends 



io8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

also were the Duke of Buckingham, who for- 
warded his cause, the Earl of Shaftsbury, the 
Marquis of Halifax, and others equally great and 
noble. How often was I regaled with the sayings 
and doings of these famous people, by my dear 
husband in the quiet of our home. 

It must be remembered that my husband was 
not a candidate for any office nor did he seek for 
himself any honor or emolument that the court 
could give. He was thus in a very independent 
position and sought only justice for all men, relief 
for his persecuted brethren, and the true welfare 
of the whole realm. 

The cause was advancing finely and new 
friends were being gained every day many and 
powerful, when suddenly from a clear sky burst 
a great storm. It was called the Popish Plot 
and was invented, or largely so, by one named 
Titus Oates, a despicable man, once a minister of 
the Church of England until his dissolute life 
caused him to be expelled. Then he became a 
Roman Catholic until he was removed from their 
ranks on account of his evil ways. Finally he 
asserted that he had discovered a secret plot of 
Rome against England. He said that the King 
was to be murdered and every Protestant was to 



FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 109 

be massacred and a French army was to land and 
conquer England. The rumor spread like wild- 
fire, and England was just in the suspicious tem- 
per to believe it. Immediate steps were taken 
for defense. Even the King, since he was a Cath- 
olic, was suspected of implication in the plot. 
The Catholic nobles were threatened and soon my 
good husband, because he had been so untiring in 
his efforts for religious tolerance, was now ve- 
hemently called an emissary of Rome and was 
accused of being in the pay of the Pope. All the 
good work that he had been doing for years for 
liberty of conscience and religious toleration now 
seemed to be swept away in the flood of suspicion. 
How strangely the work for God's truth is often- 
times blocked. 

But still my brave husband would not give up 
nor be discouraged, no matter how much was said 
against him or how bad the outlook. He knew 
his integrity and he knew also that his cause was 
just. It was not until this next event, that I shall 
tell of, that he seemed really for a time to lose 
heart. He had a friend high in position and high 
in his esteem for whom he hoped great things. 
He was the noble Algernon Sidney, of that gifted 
race of Sir Philip Sidney, who wrote the wonderful 



no A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

work called "Arcadia." In the civil war Algernon 
Sidney had made for himself an honored name for 
wisdom in council and for valor on the field. But 
since the Restoration he had lived abroad for many 
years as an exile rather than give up his republican 
principles. Now he had come back to England 
to be present at his father's deathbed, and his 
friends — among them my husband — had per- 
suaded him that it was his duty to remain in Eng- 
land and help forward the political reforms needed 
in the state. Many of the old Puritan Common- 
wealth men flocked to him and besought him to up- 
hold the great Puritan traditions. So he con- 
sented to stay, and to stand on behalf of Guilford 
for a seat in the House of Commons. My hus- 
band did everything he could for him, writing one 
address to the Quakers, another to the Protestants 
of every denomination, and still a third on Eng- 
land's great interest in the choice of a new Parlia- 
ment. Algernon Sidney was frequently with us at 
Worminghurst during these days, and a most ex- 
cellent gentleman he was. My husband had him 
in mind when he wrote : "The man for England 
should be able, learned, well affected for liberty; 
one who will neither buy his seat nor sell his serv- 
ices; he must be free from suspicion of being a 



FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE in 

pensioner on the court; he should be a person of 
energy and industry, free from the vices and weak- 
nesses of town gallants; a respecter of principles 
but not of persons ; fearful of evil but he should 
be courageous in good ; a true Protestant ; above all 
a man unconnected by office and favor with the 
court." 

And my dear Will although he disliked poli- 
tics and all the disorders and uncharitableness of 
elections, now entered heartily into the political 
fight for his friend Sidney. He canvassed electors 
for him, and made liberal speeches, quoting the 
great charters of our liberty. It seemed to me, 
as to many others, a hazardous thing to champion 
thus the political career of a statesman and a sol- 
dier who had borne arms against the reigning 
house of Stuarts and was known as a most radical 
republican. But my husband was willing to en- 
dure any hazard for a friend and any peril for 
what he believed was a righteous cause. Natu- 
rally the royalist party stirred up a violent oppo- 
sition against Algernon Sidney. When Will 
spoke on the hustings some one always cried, "Do 
not listen to him — ^he is a Jesuit." And Sidney 
himself was often publicly accused of being a 
Regicide. All kinds of election practices were 



112 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

used — bribery and intimidation. Yet in spite of 
the dishonest work of the royalist party Sidney 
received a majority of the votes. Then on the 
technical plea that he was not a freeman of the 
town of Guilford, his poll was refused and all the 
election work became worthless. How deeply 
troubled was my dear husband as he came home 
that night, at the profligacy and unfairness of the 
royalist party, at the indifference of so many elec- 
tors as to results, and at the shameful abuse heaped 
upon the noble Sidney because he had liberal con- 
victions and an earnest regard for the future wel- 
fare of England. He sat down that night and 
wrote to Sidney counseling him to keep up the 
fight for his rights and saying, "Thou hast em- 
barked thyself with them who seek and love and 
choose the best things and the multitude must have 
no weight with thee. It is the right that shall 
conquer at last." A petition was sent to the 
House of Commons but resulted in nothing. My 
husband then persuaded Sidney to stand for Bram- 
bar within five miles of Worminghurst and we 
enlisted all our friends for him, but the royalists 
again made active opposition and set up his own 
brother, Henry Sidney, against him. The elec- 
tion was a hot one, but Algernon received the cast- 



FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 113 

ing vote. He was about to take his seat to serve 
his country with his great gifts when a court in- 
trigue again canceled his election. This second 
disappointment greatly depressed my husband. 
It was one of the rare times when I saw him lose 
heart. He saw now little hope for England, for 
it seemed to him to be utterly ruled by evil cabals 
and steeped in corruption. I comforted him as 
best I could, but all he would say was, "God pity 
England. There is no hope in England. The 
deaf adder cannot be charmed." 



CHAPTER X 

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 

THIS morning something that has long been in 
my husband's mind and on his heart comes 
to light. "I will ask the King for land in Amer- 
ica and will leave England," he says. "I will 
found a state where honest men shall rule and 
justice shall be done and where all men shall be 
free." And I rejoiced in his dream. 

Now would he realize what he had planned as 
we often dreamed of it together — a new and holy 
experiment in freedom. He would lead forth a 
colony of God-fearing citizens to enjoy those 
rights and liberties that the evil passions and the 
cruel injustice of the old world deny them. This 
new world is to be a refuge for the oppressed for 
all nations. There shall be no privileged classes. 
Justice shall be equally and wisely administered. 
Yea, there shall be freedom of conscience, equal 
rights, and brotherly love for all. We will treat 

the Indians, the natives of the soil, as brothers. 

114 



THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 115 

This new state and government shall be conducted 
in the spirit of the primitive gospel of Christ. 
Did some of our friends call it poetry and romance, 
chivalry and vision *? It seemed to us the plain 
common sense of the Lord's revelation — a sincere 
attempt to forward the kingdom of God on the 
earth. It was simply to bear witness to our hon- 
est faith in Christ's teaching as a means of prac- 
tical living. 

My husband is now thirty-three years old when 
he really awakes to his great mission and feels 
that he must now do his God-given work. His 
first venture in the new world was, as we said, as 
the founder of West Jersey and he became the law- 
giver for it. Was not this the preparation for his 
still greater work to come later? 

A great code was this law for West Jersey. 
Some who have read it over call it the foundation 
of all free government by the people, such as we 
believe is bound to come in the future. Among 
its provisions are universal and unqualified suf- 
frage, perfect freedom of conscience and com- 
plete religious equality before the law, and that 
all and every person in the province shall be for- 
ever free from oppression and slavery. There 



ii6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

was much more also wise and excellent, but these 
three things especially appeal to me and also these 
words with which my husband sent to them his 
constitution — "In the fear of the Lord, and in 
true sense of his divine will we try here to lay 
foundations for after ages to understand liberty 
as Christians and as men, that they may not be 
brought into bondage but by their own consent. 
We put all power in the people." 

He told me that at length he realized that the 
Quakers must have a colony in America and that 
the hour was now ripe and that the Lord will 
bring his early dreams to pass even as he had com- 
missioned him to do his will, for said he, "The 
Puritans have gone to Massachusetts Bay and the 
Romanists to Maryland for refuge, and the Quak- 
ers must also seek peace in the new world. There 
is no hope in England, nor is there much in Amer- 
ica under present conditions unless we go to our- 
selves. For Massachusetts has whipped the 
Quakers at the cart's-tail and some of them she 
has hung on Boston Common. There is no peace 
there. Nor among the Romanists of Maryland 
or the bigoted churchmen of Virginia, who deter- 
mine to have their own way. If we would have a 
land of peace, we must have our very own province 



THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 117 

as dear George Fox also counseleth. He has told 
me of the region along the Delaware and the Sus- 
quehanna. A thought from God has come to me 
— ^Will not the King grant that region to me in 
payment of his great indebtedness to my father, 
thus he might discharge his debt, increase his Brit- 
ish colonies and at the same time rid himself of 
multitudes of Quakers who seem to trouble his 
government. So shall I put the matter before 
him." And so it fell out. 

Many days have passed since I last wrote. But 
now he has petitioned the King for a grant of land 
in lieu of the great sums of money — some sixteen 
thousand pounds — which is still due him as part 
of the heritage from his deceased father, the Ad- 
miral. He told me that a large portion of this 
sum was a loan which the Admiral Penn had made 
to the King in a time of emergency, and the other 
portion of it was unpaid salary still due the Ad- 
miral, for the King is scandalously negligent in 
money affairs and spends prodigally upon his own 
pleasure. He has designated to the King the 
region that he especially desires — the unsettled 
territory that stretches north from Lord Balti- 
more's province and runs west from the Delaware 



ii8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

River. As soon, however, as the news of his proj- 
ect is learned there is opposition from the royalist 
party. They denounce it as a scheme to put into 
practice dangerous doctrines both for the state and 
the church. Even his friend, the Duke of York, 
is at first unfavorable to the new project. Finally 
now after many months King Charles II, who is 
always destitute of money, is persuaded that this 
will be an easy way to pay the large debt against 
the crown and also be a good thing to rid the 
kingdom of a vast multitude of Quaker malcon- 
tents. So the grant is made and a charter pre- 
pared and on third month 4th, 1681,^ the King 
has set his signature to the document and the great 
dream of the holy experiment begins to be real- 
ized. My dear husband spoke to me when this 
fact was accomplished — "God hath given it to 
me in the faith of the world. He will bless it 
and make it the seed of a nation." 

Thus the King made him the grant and was 
glad to be rid of his debt. My husband agreed 
on his part as a feudal subject to render every year 
to the king two skins of beaver and a fifth part 
of all the gold and silver found in the ground; 

1 This was March which was written first month in the old 
•style. — Editor. 



THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 119 

and to the Duke of York his feudal acknowledg- 
ment was to be one rose at the feast of St. Michael 
the Archangel. It seemeth to me there is a pleas- 
ant combining of sentiment, business, and religion 
in all these transactions. 

My dear husband and I look with deep emotion 
at the great document itself, written on scrolls of 
strong parchment in the old English script, each 
line underscored with red, the borders emblazoned 
with devices, the top of the first sheet showing 
a portrait of King Charles himself. We read the 
writing most carefully, and as we do so, there 
arises to our mind's eye a sense of that great world 
beyond the sea and a vision of all the people who 
shall flock thither in God's own good time. We 
see in the flesh all those whom it shall be our mis- 
sion upon earth to bring out of darkness into light. 
Dear Will quotes this Scripture for he feels that 
it is Christ who is leading us on — "Behold my 
servant whom I uphold — to open the blind eyes, 
to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them 
that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. Sing 
unto the Lord a new song, ye that go down to the 
sea !" 

Again and again my dear husband told me that 
this grant of land was to him a sacred trust from 



120 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

the Lord. He accepted it not as a personal estate 
but as a religious possession to be held for the 
good of humanity, for the advancement of the 
cause of religious freedom and the kingdom of 
God. He wanted to serve God's truth and peo- 
ple and to set up an example to the nations in this 
holy experiment that he had undertaken. He 
was offered six thousand pounds for a monopoly 
in the trade of the province but he refused because 
he had determined to do all things equally between 
all parties, aiming at justice and righteousness and 
the spreading of the truth rather than his own 
gain. 

"I would not abuse God's love," he said, "nor 
act unworthy of his providence and so defile what 
came to me clean. No, let the Lord guide me by 
his wisdom and preserve me to honor his name and 
serve his truth and people that an example and 
standard may be set up to the nations." 

He told me again about his "opening of joy" 
concerning America while he was at Oxford, just 
after the time when Thomas Loe had first touched 
his heart by his preaching. When he saw how 
life and religion might start afresh in the virgin 
forest of America, it filled him with a deep emo- 
tion and gladness. He seemed to see how the 



THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 121 

Lord would permit him to lead forth multitudes 
of persecuted people to liberty and happiness, to 
deliver them from prison and sickness and heavy 
burdens, and to bring them into the freedom and 
peace of the primitive and pure gospel of Christ. 
The vision for many a day stirred his soul with 
deepest feeling. 

Ah, how he did love to talk with me concerning 
his holy experiment, as he called it. Yes, he 
would establish a refuge for the people of his faith 
and all faiths. There would be absolute religious 
liberty and tolerance for all faiths. He would 
prove that this was not only right and Christian, 
but profitable and advantageous in every way. 
He would show that government could be carried 
on without war and without oaths. He would 
convince the world that a pure and holy religion 
could be maintained without an established 
church, without a hireling ministry, without creeds 
and ceremony and without any persecution for re- 
ligious opinions. He would show how a people 
could live happily together in the ways of jus- 
tice and brotherhood, and have all the arts and 
refinements of life and all the prosperity of com- 
merce. He wanted to prove that the literal gos- 
pel of Christ was practical, as well as spiritual, 



122 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

full of sound sense as well as divine revelation. 
As he talked his face glowed with a radiance. 
Surely it was a great and heroic experiment to 
which God was leading him. It was a divine 
vision of light and truth. He seemed to me as 
he spoke a prophet of the Highest, a voice crying 
in the wilderness of the world and summoning the 
people to better things, a Moses leading out into 
a promised land. 

This is a great day for us at Worminghurst. 
We rejoice together at the way which the Lord is 
leading us. Dear Will is full of the spirit of the 
Scriptures, and one word I remember he quoted as 
a prophecy which on this day was being fulfilled — 
"By the greatness of thine arm, they shall be as 
still as a stone, till thy people pass over, O Lord, 
which thou hast purchased." But while we re- 
joice there is also in my heart some sadness, for 
alas ! it means that we must soon leave our sweet 
home in Sussex and go forth into the unknown 
wilderness beyond the sea. Nevertheless, we still 
feel that the Lord will go with us. 

To-day we took a cold dinner at the edge of a 
woods, taking it with us in a basket. We sat un- 
der a great tree where we could see the squirrels 



THE HOLY EXPERIMENT 123 

play, the children gathered acorns and played in 
the grass, while my husband read to me from a 
book of poems by that excellent scholar and poet, 
our friend, John Milton. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 

TOGETHER my good husband and I are 
studying over the strange maps of the new 
world, trying to determine just where to put the 
settlements and eagerly reading all that we can 
find concerning the climate and the products, from 
the relations and accounts given by various ex- 
plorers and travelers. Our good friend George 
Fox has also told us much, for he had already been 
to America holding meetings there even in Lord 
Baltimore's province and it was partly his project 
and counsel that had determined my husband to 
ask for the region along the Delaware and the 
Susquehanna. My husband had fixed upon the 
name New Wales for his territory because the 
Penns had come originally from Wales, but the 
secretary to the royal council is a Welshman and 
objects strenuously to having this province of the 
Quakers (whom he despises) called after his native 
land. My husband then proposed the name Syl- 

124 




Reproduced from Bti ell's "■William Penn" through the courtesy of I). Appltton and Company. 

ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM PENN, FATHER OF WILLIAM PENN. 

From the portrait by Sir Peter Lely. 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 125 

vania, which we had spoken of together, this word 
meaning a sylvan country or forest land. This 
is acceptable, but King Charles, who loves a dou- 
ble meaning to words, prefixed the name Penn to 
it, out of compliment to his old friend the Ad- 
miral, he said, and so it was written Pennsylvania 
in the patent. When he learned of it my husband 
said, "I fear it may appear a piece of vanity if this 
principality be called by my name." So he of- 
fered twenty guineas to the secretary to have it 
changed, but all in vain. 

Perhaps after all there may be a goodly mean- 
ing in it all; for Sylvania means woodlands, and 
Penn is the Welsh for high or head, as Pennan- 
moire in Wales and Pennrith in Cumberland are 
names for high lands, so our new province being 
a pretty high and hilly country its name may be 
taken to signify the high woodlands. As we look 
over the maps and read about this new world, 
surely our sylvan country appears a goodly land. 
It stretches inland even across the Alleghanies 
towards the banks of the Ohio River and north- 
ward to Lake Erie and southward to Lord Balti- 
more's province, although there the boundary lines 
have not been yet exactly determined. Our new 
country seems to be as large as all England. We 



126 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

are told that much of the land is hilly and green 
with woods. The Indians hunt elk and deer over 
its plains and smoke the pipe of peace. It is a 
rich and fertile land with hardly an English set- 
tler there and only a few Dutch and Swedish 
farmers along the lower Delaware. We hear of 
brooks and streams that run down its valleys and 
glens, breeding myriads of duck, curlew, and other 
water-fowl. We hear of wild game and venison 
superior to any in England; of fish in abundance, 
shad, perch, trout, and eels; and oysters, crabs, 
cockles, and other shell-fish. We hear of fruits 
that grow in wild profusion, grapes, peaches, 
plums, and strawberries, while the eye is charmed 
with the foliage and forest flowers. We hear of 
great forests of oak and walnut, pine, cedars, and 
poplars. Such is the country, a goodly land, a 
wondrous land, that is now ours to use for the 
blessing of men and the glory of God. Yes, 
surely God will bless it and make it a blessing to 
the nations. 

I cannot tell in detail about the constitution of 
this new province, but it is all written down and 
is as wise and noble as the best minds in England 
could frame. It is to be a better commonwealth 
than even the Puritans had devised, for theirs is 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 127 

a theocracy severe and intolerant; ours is to be a 
democracy, kindly, just, and brotherly. 

To-day there visited us one Samuel Shattock of 
New England, who told us of the sufferings of 
Friends in Boston in America. As early as 1656 
two Friends, one Mary Fisher, and the other Anne 
Austin, arrived by ship at Boston, for at that time 
no orders had been issued against their coming to 
New England. Yet such had been the noise 
made against them in England that when it was 
learned that some Quakers had arrived on the 
ship, officers were sent on board who searched their 
belongings and took away from them a hundred 
Quaker books. They ordered the captain to keep 
the women as prisoners on board the vessel, and 
the city council ordered the books burned in the 
market-place by the public hangman. Soon after 
the women were brought ashore and committed to 
prison. They were examined whether or not they 
practiced witchcraft, and many indignities were 
offered to them. After five weeks' imprisonment, 
the master of the vessel was put under a bond of 
a hundred pounds to carry them back to England, 
and not to permit any persons to speak to them 
whilst on board ship. Such was the welcome 



128 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

which the first Friends received at Boston from a 
people who themselves for conscience' sake had 
left old England and come to America. 

Samuel Shattock also told us of the still severer 
treatment which Friends had received on their sec- 
ond appearance there, for some of our people still 
felt impelled by the Spirit to visit the inhospitable 
city. Boston had now framed an act which was 
aimed directly at the Friends — "against that per- 
nicious sect commonly called Quakers, lately 
risen" — so ran the document — "who by word and 
writing have published and maintained many dan- 
gerous and horrid tenets, and do take upon them 
to change and alter the received laudable customs 
of our nation, in giving and receiving civil respect 
to equals or reverence to superiors; whose actions 
tend to undermine the civil government and also 
to destroy the order of the churches. So they 
ordered that every person of the cursed sect of the 
Quakers should be apprehended without warrant 
and committed to close prison without bail, and 
being convicted to be of the sect of the Quakers 
shall be banished upon pain of death." 

He told us that the first two martyrs to this 
cruel order were William Robinson, a London 
merchant, and Marmaduke Stevenson, a country- 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 129 

man of Yorkshire. These came to Boston in Sep- 
tember, 1659, and William Robinson being con- 
sidered as the more intelligent was made an exam- 
ple of, being severely whipped, and this was done 
by his being stripped on the open street, his hands 
put through the apertures of the carriage of a 
great gun while the jailer held him and the hang- 
man gave him twenty stripes with a three-fold 
cord-whip. Still another Quaker at this time, 
named Mary Dyar, of Rhode Island, was banished 
on pain of death, but they all three returned and 
were again imprisoned, and Governor Endicott 
spoke to them severely, for he had thought that 
whipping, imprisoning, and cutting off their ears, 
he said, would be sufficient. Now he spoke to 
them, "Since ye will not obey the law, harken 
to your sentence of death." He was answered by 
Stevenson, "If you put us to death, you will bring 
innocent blood upon your own head." Mary 
Dyar replied, "The will of the Lord be done," and 
being ordered to prison again, she said, "Yea, joy- 
fully I go." 

The day of their execution was the twenty- 
seventh of October in the afternoon. They were 
led to the gallows by two military officers, accom- 
panied by a band of about two hundred armed 



130 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

men, besides many horsemen. A drummer was 
appointed to march before the condemned per- 
sons, to beat the drum especially when any of them 
attempted to speak to the multitude. It was said 
that there were glorious signs of heavenly joy 
visible in the countenances of these holy martyrs 
as they walked hand in hand to the place where 
they were to suffer, and Mary Dyar said, "This 
is to me an hour of the greatest joy," adding that 
no eye could see, no ear could hear, no tongue 
could utter, no heart could understand the sweet 
refreshings of the spirit of the Lord which she 
then felt. Robinson's last words were, "I suffer 
for Christ in whom I live," and Stevenson made 
his last utterance, "This day shall we be at rest 
in the Lord." The two men died first, and our 
good friend Mary Dyar, seeing her beloved 
friends hanging dead before her, also stepped up 
the ladder, and the rope was put around her neck 
and her face covered with a handkerchief, when 
suddenly a cry was made, "Stop — for she is re- 
prieved." And so she was, through the inter- 
cession of her son. She was sent back to Rhode 
Island, but later the impulse, as she believed, 
from God came upon her to bear testimony once 
more in Boston, and she visited it again in 1660. 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 131 

Once more she was arrested. Governor Endicott 
again pronounced sentence upon her, and she an- 
swered, "1 came in obedience to the will of God, 
to have you repeal your unrighteous laws and to 
bear witness against you." The Governor asked 
her if she were a prophetess, but when she began to 
speak, he ordered her to be led forth to her exe- 
cution. The band of soldiers attended her, the 
drums beat on every side, so that none might hear 
her speak; she walked for nearly a mile, with the 
multitudes on every side to the place of execu- 
tion. She said, "In obedience to the will of the 
Lord I came, and in His will I abide faithful to 
death." So did this noble-minded woman bear 
witness to the truth, and contentedly laid down 
her life. Others also suffered in like manner. 

Samuel Shattock, who told us all these things, 
was an inhabitant of New England, but had be- 
come a Friend and had been banished on pain 
of death if ever he returned thither. And yet he 
it was who took the mandamus from King Charles 
in 1661 that stopped Governor Endicott from 
further persecutions of Friends, and brought a 
wonderful delivery. 

It is strange to me that such things as these 
could ever have happened in the New World, to 



132 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

which all had gone for religious freedom. Some 
day may God plant a province there where naught 
shall reign but the kindness and love of the Gospel. 
This new province of ours, as we said, is to be 
a democracy, Christian and hospitable to all re- 
ligions and to all men. Algernon Sidney comes 
to our home at Worminghurst and he and my 
husband work long on every part of it, striving 
to make it yet better than our friend John Locke's 
excellent constitution for Carolina. Every phrase 
employed is tested and carefully considered. 
The two law-givers work together like brothers 
over this ideal constitution for the new world. 
Methinks we owe much to the fine political genius 
of Algernon Sidney but just as much, I believe, 
to the sound common sense, the practical wisdom 
and the broad Christian spirit of my dear hus- 
band. One thing stands out most prominently — 
this state is to be founded on absolute religious 
tolerance — the fullest liberty in any of the colo- 
nies. We are aware that the Massachusetts Bay 
colony has proclaimed religious liberty for the 
Puritans but has expelled the Quakers and the 
Baptists, and we know that Lord Baltimore's 
province has issued an edict of toleration, but this 
is only for Trinitarians and condemns to death 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 133 

any who dare to doubt or speak unfavorably of 
the doctrine of the Trinity. Now in our new 
colony of Pennsylvania we shall insist and pro- 
claim that there shall be forever absolute religious 
liberty and toleration for all religious beliefs — 
all men shall be free to worship as they please 
without let or hindrance — all men shall be free 
and equal in the eyes of the law — all men of all 
creeds or colors shall be esteemed brothers and 
shall be treated as such. Is it not a goodly 
dream? 

In all my husband's thought, the great funda- 
mental, as he calls it, is this (I write it in his own 
words) : "In reverence to God, the Father of 
light and spirits, the author as well as the object 
of all divine knowledge, faith, and workings, I 
do for me and mine, declare and establish for the 
first fundamental of the government of my prov- 
ince, that every person that doth and shall reside 
there shall have and enjoy the free profession of 
his or her faith and exercise of worship towards 
God, in such way and manner as every such per- 
son shall in conscience believe most acceptable to 
God." This was the central article of the twen- 
ty-four in his constitution, and surely signifies a 
real advance in the matter of civil and religious 



134 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

liberty over any colony or government now exist- 
ing. 

I love the letter he sent to the Indians, at the 
very beginning, by our cousin Markham. This 
passage in it delights me: ''Now the great God 
hath been pleased to make me concerned in your 
part of the world and the king of the country 
where I live hath given me a great province 
therein; but I desire to enjoy it with your love 
and consent, that we may always live together as 
neighbors and friends, for the great God hath 
made us not to devour and destroy one another, 
but to live soberly and kindly together in this 
world." 

As we study over the map we decide that we 
want a chief city, at the point where the two 
rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill, come to- 
gether. We have talked over a name for this 
city and I think it was I who suggested that pleas- 
ant name, Philadelphia, which means the city of 
Brotherly Love, after that ancient city in Asia 
Minor which we read about in the Book of Reve- 
lation. The significance of the name appeals to 
us greatly, for this is our ideal and our dream. 

It is beautiful to see Will's enthusiasm, for he 



THE SYLVAN COUNTRY 135 

is as happy as a boy as he is planning his city of 
Brotherly Love. He hopes that it may always 
be a city of justice and religion and kindly deal- 
ings, always be a wholesome and beautiful city. 
He said, "Let every house be placed in the mid- 
dle of its plat, so that there may be ground on 
each side for gardens, or orchards, or fields; that it 
may be a green country town which will never be 
burnt and always be wholesome." As for me, I 
want somewhere near the city but perhaps a little 
way up the river a quiet manor house with plenty 
of ground about it, somewhat like this dear estate 
of Worminghurst where we had been so happy. 
We grow so enthusiastic as we plan it all out that 
I become eager to go to this new land of happy 
promise and of fairest hope. 

Played awhile to-day on the spinnet which I 
love. 



CHAPTER XII 

FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 

THIS morning I went out on my white palfrey 
down the blackthorn lane and gathered a 
great bunch of tiger lilies for my dear Will. He 
loves flowers and I love to gather them for him. 
I do not always gather flowers that have fragrance, 
but I like those that are full of beauty and poetic 
meaning. The other day I brought a lap-full of 
flowers with such rustical names as sauce-alone, 
ragged-robin, sneezewort, cream-and-codlins, and 
j ack-in-the-hedge. 

My heart is sore to-day, for at last we have 
decided that at present the voyage is not for me 
and the children, and that my dear husband must 
go alone, but he tells me that it is only for a short 
time. He will go and look over the country and 
prepare the homestead and before we realize it he 
will be back again to take me and the children to 
our new home. Springett is growing nicely and 

136 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 137 

little William and Letitia are doing well. But 
my own health is somewhat delicate and my hus- 
band feels that I ought not to be subjected to the 
rigor of that long voyage across the Atlantic or 
the exposure to a new climate and unknown con- 
ditions until some preparation has been made. 
So I have had to yield to this decision, but O I I do 
so long to go with him. 

Already as soon as the grant was made, he had 
sent forth our cousin, Colonel William Markham, 
to take possession of the territory in his name, to 
inform the settlers and the Indians of his peace- 
ful and friendly coming, and to adjust the bound- 
ary line with Lord Baltimore. Two vessels have 
already sailed from the Thames, called the Amity 
and the John Sarah^ and another called the Bris- 
tol Factor from the Avon at Bristol. These car- 
ried many Quakers. Other emigrants are soon 
to set forth — a German company from Frankfort 
and from other points. Fifteen thousand acres 
have been bought by Franz Pastorius for a Ger- 
man colony, and at Bristol a commercial company 
organized under the name of the Free Society of 
Traders is full of promising plans. 

I am also glad to learn that certain disputes as 
to the grant are now well nigh settled and are 



138 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

largely in our favor, giving us a still greater strip 
of land on the Delaware River front toward Cape 
Henlopen. My husband is full of anticipation 
for the voyage, really excited by his long hope 
for good fortune, and the near realization of his 
dreams. He has the promise of an excellent 
printer, William Bradford of Leicester, to go out 
with him, taking his presses, and this is a great 
comfort for my husband does love to write and 
print pamphlets and books as a part of his work 
for God. He is also engaging skillful manufac- 
turers of wool and other staples to migrate with 
him for he expects to make his province a manu- 
facturing center. The Royal Society, which has 
recently elected him a member, has requested him 
to make full observations on points of scientific 
interest and transmit them to England. 

It is the good ship Welcome which is to take 
him to America. It is already in the Downs — a 
stately bark of three hundred tons burden. Al- 
ready about a hundred well-to-do men and women 
have promised to go with him on the voyage. 
The passage will last from six to fourteen weeks, 
according to conditions of wind and weather. 
May it be short and prosperous ! 

I have jotted down here a list of some of the 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 139 

comforts that have been put on board for the 
particular use of my husband and his servants. 
There were thirty-two fowls, seven turkeys, eleven 
ducks, two hams, a barrel of China oranges, a 
keg of sweetmeats, a keg of rum, a pot of tama- 
rinds, a box of spices, ditto of dried herbs, eighteen 
cocoanuts, a box of eggs, six balls of chocolate, 
six dried codfish and five shaddock, six bottles of 
citron water, four bottles of madeira, five dozen 
of good ale, one large keg of wine, and nine pints 
of brandy. There was also much solid food in 
the shape of flour, sheep, and hogs/ So that for- 
sooth they are not likely to starve on shipboard. 
And I made sure also that he had a goodly ward- 
robe for himself and that the ship carried the fur- 
niture for our new home, especially the carved 
doors and window frames for the manor. So that 
all would be ready for us by the time he comes for 
us. 

While we were hurrying these preparations it 
grieved us exceedingly to learn that my husband's 
loving mother. Lady Penn of Wanstead, had sud- 
denly died. She was a tender and affectionate 
mother, of a very merry and sprightly disposition, 

1 1 find a similar list authenticated for another Quaker 
voyager of that day. — Editor. 



140 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

and tills sorrow was a great blow to him. His 
mother had come very near to his heart and had 
often pleaded for him even in the days when his 
father was angry with him for becoming a 
Quaker. This present bereavement affected him 
deeply. For many days he seemed as one stunned 
and was unable to bear the light of day, so heavy 
and overwhelming was his grief. 

This calamity seemed to make sadder the heavy 
bereavement of his leaving me — even for the few 
months that it might be. The unknown perils of 
the voyage depressed him. The hour of farewell 
appeared a very dark one to him. He left me 
and the little ones to the care of Lady Springett, 
Thomas Ellwood and other faithful friends, but 
he had a very heavy heart. 

I went down with him to see the good ship Wel- 
come on ninth month 1st, 1682.^ The vessel 
lay off Deal. There were many pale and anxious 
faces among these two hundred emigrants. It 
was a busy time and a noisy place with the litter 
of bags and boxes, the rolling of barrels, the noises 
of sheep and ducks and the shouts of the sailors. 
We had time on shipboard only for a few quiet 

1 This date originally reads seventh month, which is the 
old style and etymologically September. — Editor. 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 141 

words and a tender farewell and then the Wel- 
come weighed anchor and passed the Foreland 
with a light breeze. And so farewell to my lover 
and my lord for many weary months, and for 
many of these voyagers farewell to England for- 
ever. 

Just before sailing he had put into my hands a 
packet and when I returned to Worminghurst I 
opened it in the quiet of my own room. It was a 
written farewell for me and our children. It 
touched my heart deeply that he should think so 
much of us. It was so full of wise and noble 
counsels and so tenderly conceived and nobly writ- 
ten. It was his loving testament for our guidance 
in case Providence should take him from us on this 
long and perilous voyage. I have treasured every 
word of it, but in this journal I shall transcribe but 
a few of the gracious and noble sentences. These 
paragraphs touched me deeply: 

"My love, which neither sea nor land nor death 
itself can extinguish, or lessen towards thee most 
endearingly, will visit thee with eternal embraces 
and will abide with thee forever and may the God 
of my life watch over thee and bless thee. 

"My dear wife, remember thou wast the love 
of my youth and much the joy of my life; the 



142 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

most beloved as well as the most worthy of all my 
earthly comforts and the reason of that love was 
more thy inward than thine outward excellencies 
which yet were many. God knows and thou 
knowest it, I can say it was a match of Provi- 
dence's making and that God's image in us was 
the first thing and the most amiable and engaging 
ornament in our eyes. Now I am to leave thee, 
and that without knowing whether I shall ever 
see thee more in this world, take my counsel into 
thy bosom and let it dwell with thee in my stead 
while thou livest. 

"My dearest, I recommend to thy care our dear 
children abundantly beloved of me as the Lord's 
blessings and the sweet pledges of our mutual and 
endeared affection. I would rather they were 
home-lovers and honest than finely bred as to out- 
ward behavior, yet I love sweetness mixed with 
gravity and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety. 
Religion in the heart leads into this true civility, 
teaching men and women to be mild and courteous 
in their behavior — an accomplishment worthy of 
all praise." 

Here also are some other things I love in this 
farewell letter: 

"Be diligent in meetings for worship and busi- 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 143 

ness, and let meetings be kept once a day in the 
family to wait upon the Lord, and, my dearest, 
to make thy family matters easy to thee, divide 
thy time and be regular; it is easy and sweet. 
Cast up thy income and see what it daily amounts 
to and I beseech thee to live low and sparsely till 
my debts are paid. 

"Let the children be bred up in the love of vir- 
tue and that holy plain way of it which we have 
lived in, that the world in no part of it get into 
my family. Let them be carefully taught. For 
their learning be liberal, spare no cost. Agri- 
culture is especially in my eye; let my children be 
husbandmen and housewives; it is industrious, 
healthy, honest and of good example. 

"I do charge you, my dear children, before the 
Lord God, and the holy angels, that you be lovely, 
diligent, and tender, fearing God, loving the peo- 
ple, and hating covetousness. Let justice have its 
impartial course and the law free passage. 
Though to your loss, protect no man against it; 
for you are not above the law, but the law above 
you. Live the lives yourselves, you would have 
the people live." 

These words concerning his love for me I most 
tenderly cherish in my heart: 



144 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

"My dear children, be obedient to your dear 
mother, a woman whose virtue and good name is 
an honor to you; for she hath been exceeded by 
none in her time for her integrity, industry, hu- 
manity, virtue and good understanding — qualities 
not usual among women of her worldly condition 
and quality. Therefore honor and obey her, my 
dear children, as your mother, and as your father's 
love and delight; nay, love her too for she loved 
your father with a deep and upright love, choos- 
ing him before all her many suitors, and though 
she be of a delicate constitution and noble spirit, 
yet she descended to the utmost tenderness and 
care for you, performing the painfulest acts 
of service to you in your infancy as a mother 
and a nurse too. I charge you before the Lord, 
honor and obey, love and cherish your dear 
mother. 

"So farewell to my thrice beloved wife and 
children — yours, as God pleaseth, in that love 
which no waters can quench, no time forget, nor 
distance wear away, but remains forever." 

Thus ran some of the noble sentences from his 
farewell letter to me and as I sat and read it there 
in my room I thought — "Was ever woman more 
tenderly beloved? was ever marriage more conse- 



FAREWELL TO ENGLAND 145 

crated by the heavenly spirit? was there ever a 
nobler soul than this dear husband of mine who 
now says farewell to England and to his loved 
ones at Worminghurst?" 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 

TODAY by another returning ship, the Bns- 
tol Factor^ I have had the first news of the 
voyage of the Welcome and my dear husband's 
safe and prosperous arrival in the New World. 
Loving letters came from him full of thanksgiv- 
ing to God for his gracious care and telling of his 
welcome at the Swedish town of Upland. He 
also enclosed a copy of a diary of the voyage kept 
by Thomas Pearson.^ It tells that my husband 
was a good sailor and says that he knew the art 
of navigation fully as well as the master of the 
ship, for it had been taught him by his father the 
Admiral, long before he went to Oxford. 

There was one thing in this diary of the voyage 
that distressed me, although my husband made no 
mention of it in his letters. It tells how a fort- 
night after sailing a pestilence of small-pox broke 
out on board and twenty-seven of the passengers 

1 Only a few fragments of this log have been preserved. — 
Editor. 

146 



THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 147 

died and many more were ill. For more than two 
weeks the pestilence scourged the ship. But my 
dear husband was most pitiful and courageous. 
He gave care and stores from his own supplies 
without stint. He had never had the disease but 
nevertheless he went freely among those who were 
stricken. By day and by night he sat with them 
in their cabins speaking words of comfort to them, 
giving medicines and consoling the dying. 

It was a sorrowing time. The poor women folk 
were frightened by the woeful pestilence. They 
had a horror of it. They knew not who nearest 
and dearest to them might be the next victim. 
Nearly every night a shrouded and shotted body 
would be dropped over the ship's side into an 
ocean grave with the prayers of all and many 
tears. It looked for a time as if the whole com- 
pany might fall on death here in the ocean. The 
crew grew rebellious, for several of them were al- 
ready disaffected toward the Quakers at starting, 
and now felt that this calamity was a punishment 
on the pernicious people. I hear that they even 
talked of a mutiny to seize the Quaker captain 
and his friend William Penn and fling them over- 
board or send them adrift, so that the ship might 
find its luck again. My husband wrote me that 



148 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

often he saw their angry looks and heard their 
muttered words, but he went on serenely, doing 
his duty and being kinder to all than ever. These 
are the very words of the diary of Thomas Pear- 
son — "The good and cheerful conversation of 
Governor Penn was most advantageous unto all 
the company; and he manifested singular care in 
contributing to the necessities of the many who 
were sick of the small-pox on board. Though 
never having had the disease himself and being 
therefore subject to its contagion, he attended the 
cots and hammocks of those prostrated without 
fear, trusting all in the mercy of the Lord." 
Surely God's perfect love had banished fear from 
his heart. 

Altogether there were one hundred and sixteen 
souls who sailed on the Welcome^ all Quakers ex- 
cept three Huguenots. There was one child born 
on shipboard but many boys and girls as well as 
some grown up people died on this fatal voyage, 
some say in all fully thirty. For there were two 
things which helped to increase the sickness — the 
crowded condition of the cabins and the want of 
fresh provisions. Yet all that could be done for 
the sick was done. 

Once, he said, only once did his heart fail. For 



THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 149 

in the midst of the pestilence came a heavy storm 
and for a day and a half were they locked under 
the hatches. It was a terrible experience for 
these people in their sickened and weakened con- 
dition. But, he said, he went apart and alone in 
a cabin he lifted his prayer to God and soon the 
storm ceased and the sun broke, and there was a 
great calm. On First day he held on deck a meet- 
ing for all — there were tears for the dead and 
prayers for the living and the hearts of several of 
the rebellious sailors were touched and before the 
voyage ended all but one had come to the knowl- 
edge of the truth. 

I need not tell of some disputes on this voyage, 
for it seems that a few narrow and small souls 
were of the company. Some thought more of 
themselves than of the others, and some desired 
the loaves and fishes rather than the bread of life. 
But God was wonderfully present, and over-ruled 
all unholy plans and designs, and brought the 
company at last into sweetest accord. I believe 
it was my husband's faith and loftiness of pur- 
pose that brought them into unity. 

The voyage as the diary told was nearly eight 
weeks — about fifty-two days, and aside from the 
sickness and sadness of the fatal two weeks, all 



ISO A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

was pleasant and prosperous. The weather was 
mostly fair. Governor Penn was the life and 
light of the ship. Often he discoursed to them 
concerning the plans of the new colony, and on 
First days he spoke unto them the everlasting word 
of truth. Many of those of the Welcome were to 
be leaders of affairs in the province and day by day 
they counseled together how they might best serve 
humanity and honor God. 

There were some of those on board who were 
somewhat fearful as they drew near to the end 
of the voyage and faced the unknown perils of the 
new land and the Indians. Many of them had 
heard terrible tales of the cruelty of the Indians, 
of raids and massacres in other colonies, especially 
Virginia and Massachusetts, and some wondered 
after all, whether it might not be risking too much 
to go absolutely unarmed into the wilderness of 
Pennsylvania with only the gospel of peace. 
They brought their fears and misgivings to my 
husband and he reassured them ; he was confident, 
he said, that the Lord would be with them, for 
God had given him these dreams of the New 
World, and was leading him in all his ways. 

On tenth month 22nd, 1682,^ they made the 

1 This date was originally written eighth month which was 
the old style for October. — Editor. 



THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 151 

capes of the Delaware and all rejoiced at the 
sight of land. Three days more and the Wel- 
come came to anchor off the port of New Castle, 
the most important village on the Delaware. 
Here my husband landed and a general holiday 
was made in his honor by all the people, young 
and old, Dutch, English, Swede and German. 
They crowded to the landing place to welcome one 
who came not merely as Governor but as a friend 
to all. Next day he called the people together 
in the Dutch Courthouse and went through the 
formal custom of taking possession by receiving 
turf, twig, earth and water as a symbol in the 
ancient feudal way. He told the people who 
listened in profound silence that he came as the 
Lord had led him; that from his early youth he 
had nursed this dream of founding a free and 
godly colony in which the people should rule them- 
selves in fullest liberty of conscience and fullest 
civil rights for every man. They listened with 
wonder and delight, and had but one request, 
namely that he should stay among them and rule 
among them in person. He promised to do all 
that he could for them and so took his leave. 

Then he sailed further up the river in the Wel- 
come. The river grew more and more beautiful, 



152 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

the landscape was rich with the charm of wooded 
shores and large creeks tempting exploration. 
Soon they came to the Swedish village of Upland 
where our cousin Colonel Markham was awaiting 
him, and now at this village he was within his own 
province of Pennsylvania. So here they cast 
anchor and my husband was the first to land on 
tenth month 27th, 1682.^ He rejoiced greatly. 
This spot marked his first foot-steps in his new 
province and I believe it will be memorable for- 
ever. Just after he landed he turned to his com- 
panion Thomas Pearson and spoke — "Providence 
has brought us safely here ; thou hast been the com- 
panion of my toils; what wilt thou call this 
place?" And Thomas Pearson answered after a 
moment's thought — "Let it be called Chester in 
remembrance of the city whence I came." And 
so henceforth was it called. 

So here ends the voyage of the Welcome and 
here my dear husband sees with his own eyes the 
free and sacred soil of his new commonwealth. 
It was an event worthy of remembrance. It was 
the first actual realization of his dream. He told 
me in a letter that as he leaned on the prow of the 
Welcome coming up the river his heart was full 

1 This notable date was originally written eighth month, 
which is October in the old style. — Editor. 



THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 153 

of great joy and devout thanksgiving. This 
beautiful river, this wonderful land was to be his 
future home and the home of the oppressed of all 
lands. It was the Lord's doing and was marvel- 
ous in his eyes. As he beheld for the first time 
what he called "the new-blown garden" of Penn- 
sylvania, he quoted to himself those words of the 
ancient scripture — "Thy God bringeth thee into a 
goodly land of fountains and depths that spring 
out of valleys and hills — a land whose stones are 
iron and out of whose hills thou mayst dig brass." 

As I read his letters to me and Thomas Pear- 
son's log book of the voyage even in our quiet home 
at Worminghurst I seemed to see it all. I beheld 
my dear husband at the vessel's prow as he came up 
the river to the fair haven of his dream — I knew 
the thoughts that were surging upon him, the 
tumult in his heart, the wondrous exaltation in his 
soul because of the consummation of this great and 
glorious day and as I rejoice with him, my 
thoughts and my love fly swiftly across the broad 
Atlantic to that fair land of promise soon to be 
our home. 

According to his letters, my dear husband is 
greatly pleased with his new land. He writes me 
that the air is sweet and clear and the heavens 



154 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

serene. Trees, fruits, and flowers grow in great 
abundance, especially a great red grape and a 
white kind of muskadul out of which he hopes 
to make a good wine. The ground is fertile. 
Another sentence from that letter sent to the 
Indians before he went to America, I may quote 
here. It is so beautiful in spirit. He said — 
"The great God who is the power and wisdom 
that made you and me, incline your hearts to 
righteousness, love and peace. This I send to as- 
sure you of my love and to desire you to love my 
friends; and when the great God brings me 
among you I intend to order all things in such a 
manner that we may all live in love and peace 
one with another which I hope the great God will 
incline both me and you to do. I seek nothing 
but the honor of his name and that we who are 
his workmanship may do that which is well pleas- 
ing to him. So I rest in the love of God that 
made us." Now that he has come to them and 
has seen them, he writes that these Indians are 
tall, straight, and well built, walking with a lofty 
chin. They are mostly the Susquehannas and 
the Delawares. They seem to him light of heart 
with strong affections, and the most merry of crea- 
tures that live. Though they are under a dark 



THE VOYAGE OF THE WELCOME 155 

night in things relating to religion, yet he says 
they are believers in God, whom they call the 
Great Spirit and they believe in the future life. 
"I bless the Lord," he writes in a letter, "I am 
very well and much satisfied with my place and 
portion. O how sweet is the quiet of these parts, 
freed from the anxious and troublesome solicita- 
tions, hurries, and persecutions of woeful Eu- 
rope !" 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE TREATY UNDER THE ELM 

ANOTHER batch of letters has just reached 
me by a returning ship. My dear husband 
has left Chester and gone up the river to the site 
of his new City of Brotherly Love. He was 
rowed up the river in a great barge with three 
pairs of rowers, passed old Tinicum where the 
Swedish Governor once lived until they came to 
Wicaco, a small Swedish settlement at the junc- 
tion of the two great rivers, the Delaware and the 
Schuylkill, and here as all agreed was the right 
location for the new city. Already the year be- 
fore upon the banks above the Swedish settlement 
a clearing had been made by Colonel Markham 
in anticipation of their coming and here a log 
tavern had been built by a settler, named John 
Guest which was called The Sign of the Blue 
Anchor. It stood on a knoll about twenty feet 
above high tide with a small cove or harbor flow- 
ing into the river south of it. There were also 

156 



THE TREATY UNDER THE ELM 157 

some nine other houses already built and occupied 
to the northward of it. This was the first land- 
ing place, and here the new city of Brotherly Love 
began. 

But the most interesting thing to me in these 
letters is the account of the treaty with the Indians 
made under the great elm tree at Shackamaxon 
which in the Indian tongue means the place of 
kings. First of all he became acquainted with 
these children of the forest. He won their confi- 
dence by his easy manners and familiar speech 
with them. Old Captain Cockle was the inter- 
preter for him. Will walked with the Indians 
and sat with them on the ground to watch the 
young men dance. He joined in their feasts and 
ate their roasted hominy and acorns. They gave 
him an Indian name — the Delaware Indians call 
him Mignon, but he liked the name the Iroquois 
gave him, Onas. And when they had their sports 
of running and leaping, the great Onas entered 
the lists and beat them at some of their own 
games, whereat the younger warriors were full of 
delight. 

You must understand that as my husband had 
given directions, our cousin Colonel Markham 
had already made a treaty of peace and amity with 



158 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

the natives and had purchased a goodly share of 
land. He had explained to them before my hus- 
band came all his peaceful intentions towards 
them; he had told them that he would not take a 
single foot of their hunting ground but would buy 
it from them with their full consent. He would 
never allow any of his people to wrong them or 
cheat them of fish or wild game, or beaver skins. 
He would treat them as brothers. So the Indian 
sachems had given a wampum belt to the young 
Colonel and had replied — "We will live in peace 
with Onas and his children as long as the sun and 
moon endure." And the land for Philadelphia 
had then been purchased by him from the Indians 
and also a site for our manor on the Delaware. 

A letter tells me the odd way in which they 
sometimes surveyed the land they needed. The 
agreement with the Indians for one tract was that 
it should extend as far as a man could walk there 
and back in three days, that is a day and a half 
each way. So my husband with several friends 
and a party of Indians began one day in Novem- 
ber at the mouth of the Neshaminy. In a day 
and a half they arrived at a point about thirty 
miles distant at the mouth of a creek which they 
called Baker's from the name of the man who first 



THE TREATY UNDER THE ELM 159 

reached it. Here they marked a spruce tree. 
They walked at leisure, the Indians sitting down 
sometimes to smoke their pipes and the white men 
to eat biscuit and cheese and drink a bottle of 
wine. 

He has written us wonderful descriptions of 
the Indians, very long and full of interest. One 
thing that especially interested me was that he 
feels from his study and observation that they 
are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. 
He writes — "They are generally tall, straight, 
well-built, and of singular proportion ; they tread 
strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty 
chin. Their skin is swarthy. Their eye is little 
and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew. I 
have seen as comely European-like faces among 
them of both sexes as on your side the sea. Their 
language is lofty, yet narrow, but like the Hebrew 
in signification, full. I am ready to believe them 
of the Jewish race, I mean of the stock of the lost 
tribes of Israel and that for the following reasons : 
First, these tribes were directed in the Old Testa- 
ment to go to a land not planted or known. In 
the next place, I find them and their children of 
so lively resemblance and countenance that a man 
would think himself among the Jews of Dukes 



i6o A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Place or Berry Street in London when he seeth 
them; but this is not all, for they agree in re- 
ligious rites. They reckon by moons, they offer 
their first fruits, they have a kind of feast of 
tabernacles, they are said to lay their altar upon 
twelve stones, besides many other things similar 
to the ancient tribes of Israel." 

Now since the Governor himself had arrived, a 
great treaty was to be made with these Indians to 
renew the former promises of peace with Colonel 
Markham and to form an enduring league with 
the Indian chiefs and warriors. Thus, as I un- 
derstand it from the letters, was the way in which 
the great treaty was made under this famous elm 
on the banks of the Delaware. It was a noble 
tree one hundred and fifty years old, and often had 
the Indian warriors of the friendly tribes met 
there in the olden times to smoke the calumet of 
peace, long before the white people had come to 
those shores. The letters say that it was a most 
beautiful spot for a solemn conference. Behind 
was the great forest of cedar, pine and chestnut, 
while in front the noble river rolled its majestic 
waters even to the Atlantic. To this great meet- 
ing came the Indians in full feathers, their bodies 
painted yellow, red and blue. The chief sachem 



THE TREATY UNDER THE ELM 161 

was Taminent. The Indians were of the Dela- 
ware and Susquehanna tribes of the Lenni Lenape 
which signified the original people and included 
many tribes speaking the dialects of the Algon- 
quin language. The northern regions were held 
by the Iroquois who were banded together in a 
confederacy of the Six Nations. These warriors 
who were gathered at Shackamaxon on the Dela- 
ware were noble-looking men, tall and straight. 
The older sachems sat on the right and left, the 
middle-aged warriors ranged themselves in the 
form of a crescent around them, and the younger 
men formed a third or outer semi-circle. Of the 
white people present there were Colonel Mark- 
ham in the uniform of an English soldier, Thomas 
Pearson, the chronicler of the voyage, a great com- 
pany of Quakers in their sober suits, member of 
the council and others, some Swedes in the uni- 
forms of the army of Gustavus Adolphus, some 
sailors and a few Dutch settlers. And in the 
center of the whole group my dear husband, Gov- 
ernor Penn himself, as he was now called, in his 
best long coat and full slashed trousers and a pro- 
fusion of ruffles, white sleeves and a handsome 
figure I know. He is just thirty-eight years old 
now, light and graceful in form and as one of his 



i62 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

friends has written of him "the handsomest best- 
looking, lively gentleman that I know," and I may 
myself add, just as true and noble as he is hand- 
some. 

Well, as soon as all were seated and the pipes 
lighted, smoked, and passed from one to the other, 
the oldest Indian sachem announced that they 
were prepared to hear and consider his words. 
Then my husband arose and spoke to them in the 
language of nature. Only a little can I put down 
here of what he said. "The Great Spirit," he told 
them, "who ruled in the heaven to which good 
men go after death, who made them all out of 
nothing and who knew every secret thought that 
was in the heart of white man or red man, knew 
that he and his children had a strong desire to live 
in peace, to be their friends, to do no wrong, but 
to serve them in every way. As the Great Spirit 
was the common Father of them all, he wished 
them to live together not merely as brothers and 
the children of a common parent, but as if they 
were joined with one head, one heart, one body 
together; that if ill was done to one all would suf- 
fer; if good was done to any all would gain. He 
and his children," he went on to say, "never fired 
the rifle, never trusted to the sword; they met the 
red men on the broad path of good faith and good 



THE TREATY UNDER THE ELM 163 

will, they meant no harm and had no fear." He 
then read the treaty of friendship and explained 
its clauses. He asked them to tell their children 
of this league and chain of friendship "that it 
might grow stronger and stronger and be kept 
bright and clean without rust or spot, while the 
waters ran down the creeks and the rivers, and 
while the sun and the moon and the stars en- 
dured." Then he laid the scroll of the treaty of 
peace and friendship on the ground and the chief 
sachem and others spoke for their people, receiv- 
ing the proposal and promising peace, while all 
the warriors together shouted in accord: "We 
will live in peace with Onas and his children as 
long as the sun and moon endure." I am so glad 
that we have made friends with these Indians, for 
thus we believe God wants us to do, to have these 
people of the forest as our brothers and to teach 
them both by word and deed the blessed gospel of 
the love of God. 

There has come to my reading an account of the 
Massachusetts Bay Colony and the settlement at 
Plymouth with Captain Miles Standish and his 
little army going against the Indians of Wessagus- 
sett. I am grateful to God that we can begin our 
colony with peace and friendship with ou.r Indian 
brothers. So may it ever be! 



CHAPTER XV 

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 

WAS there ever kindlier thought, or greater 
justice and kindness manifested in the 
founding of a city than this city of our hopes and 
dreams'? Not only has the land been bought 
from the Indians but also on their own terms from 
the Swedes who had first settled on it. So all is 
clear. And the city just as we had it in mind in 
England, just as we planned it at our home in 
Worminghurst, fair and perfect in our minds be- 
fore it was seen by mortal eye, before a single 
brick or stone was laid, now begins to be staked 
out and to take visible shape — its streets, its 
houses, its wharves, its open spaces. This city 
does not grow up haphazard as so many cities have 
done, but it was first born in thought and spirit as 
that fair city in the Book of Revelation is said to 
have descended from heaven. 

It is to be a great square, nearly equal on all 

sides as were the measurements of the heavenly 

164 



THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 165 

city. It is to have two noble spaces along the 
rivers lined with trees. These are to be con- 
nected by a broad way a hundred feet wide called 
High Street lined with trees and at right angles 
from the center of this is to be another great street, 
Broad Street, and at the crossing of these two 
streets in the center of the city is to be a public 
square of ten acres and in the middle of each of 
the four quarters of the city, there are to be other 
public squares of eight acres each for the comfort 
and recreation of all forever. All streets paral- 
lel to these great streets are to be fifty feet wide 
and all houses are to stand apart with rustic 
porches and trailing vines. For we have planned 
to make this City of Brotherly Love not an old- 
world city of bricks and stones and hard streets, 
but a sylvan city, a green country city, cool to live 
in and pleasant for the eyes. 

And so my dear husband writes me it is being 
staked out by his trusty surveyor, good Thomas 
Holme, and the colonists are eager to purchase and 
set up dwellings. One of the first things my hus- 
band is looking after, he says, is a school for the 
children. Even before the pines had been cleared 
from the ground he began to build a school and 
to set up a printing press. William Bradford, his 



i66 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

printer, had brought all things necessary, including 
ink and sufficient paper. The first school was 
opened in twelfth month, 1683, with Enoch 
Flower as teacher. It is held in a little house 
formed of pine and cedar planks; these were the 
charges — "To learn to read four shillings a quar- 
ter; to write six shillings; boarding a scholar, to 
wit, diet, lodging, washing and schooling, ten 
pounds the whole year." 

My husband has for a dwelling a brick house 
on Front Street facing the river in the center of a 
lot south of High Street and here the early meet- 
ings of the council are held. It was only a modest 
dwelling, for our real home is to be outside the city 
at the manor on the Delaware. Many people, he 
tells me, live in huts or caves by the river while 
their houses are being built. Some of the letters 
to me tell of curious things. One day he saw a 
woman sitting at the door of her cave and allowing 
a snake which she had tamed to share her bowl of 
porridge with her, calling the snake by pet names. 
Another woman was told by her husband to pre- 
pare dinner while he worked on the house, and she 
went home not knowing where the meat for the 
dinner was to come from, but when she reached 
the cave she found her cat had caught and brought 



THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 167 

in a rabbit, and this she took for the dinner and 
served as she would an English hare. Some of 
the German emigrants were also living in these 
caves. My husband writes that he was amused 
to see the motto which the learned Franz Pastorius 
has set up over the door of his abode — ''Parva 
domus^ sed arnica bonis. Frocul este profaniT ^ 
The dwellings go up rapidly, the men work with 
a will. Within a few months eighty houses and 
cottages are ready. My husband writes that al- 
ready the place has become very beautiful and 
homelike and especially delightful in its new at- 
mosphere of liberty and peace. Some have writ- 
ten me, how truly pleasant they think it is to see 
my dear husband moving among the people at his 
new city, suggesting plans and helping them as a 
real father with his people. 

I am much pleased at a friend's description of 
my husband as he is living at present in Phila- 
delphia and doubtless what the letter says is just 
and true. It reads — "He is most hospitable to 
high and low alike, never without a friend or two 
at meals and his house is always filled with so- 
journing guests. All that he possesses is at his 

1 Perhaps we may translate: "Small is my dwelling, but 
friendly to all good folk. Let others stay far off." — Editor. 



i68 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

neighbor's service — ^horses, vehicles, barge, or any 
utensil. His conversation is wholesome to the 
spirit and gives refreshment to the mind. He 
loves wit, and is fond of a jest, so that it be de- 
corous and chaste. His habit is to dispose of busi- 
ness, public and private, in the forenoon. The 
rest of the day he uses for walks about the town 
to view improvements and to advise the people. 
Sometimes he goes off to Pennsbury for several 
days. In dispatch of business he is quick to the 
point and likes not small disputings or petty bar- 
gains. Rather than submit to such he either 
terminates the matter at once or yields to the im- 
portunity of the other party. Altogether he is a 
most excellent and friendly man and greatly 
thought of by the whole colony." ^ Such words 
as these are very pleasing to me and refreshing to 
my heart. 

1 Similar words are quoted in contemporary documents. — 
Editor. 



CHAPTER XVI 

OUR MANOR OF PENNSBURY 

OWHEN will my dear husband come back 
to take me with him ! The weeks and the 
months have lengthened far beyond what I 
thought, but he writes that it takes longer than he 
himself expected and that he is making all things 
ready and will soon come for me. 

He writes that in the City of Brotherly Love 
he has reserved equal lots for each of his three 
dear children and also that he has kept a goodly 
estate of a thousand acres of the best land in the 
province for the use and profit of dear George 
Fox. 

But what especially delights me is that which he 

tells me he has planned for me in our new home 

on the river. The ground has been bought from 

the Indians and was a place of ancient Indian 

royalty, with the arms of the river almost bent 

and encircling around it. It consists of more than 

eight thousand acres and we have called it Penns- 

169 



170 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

bury. We had planned the house together and 
by our directions our cousin Colonel Markham 
has begun to build it for us. It stands on a gentle 
eminence and will be two stories high, built of 
brick with roof of tiles. The front of the manor 
house is sixty feet facing the Delaware, the upper 
windows, he tells me, commanding beautiful 
views. The depth is forty feet. There are out 
houses on each wing in pleasant fashion. There 
is also a large and handsome porch and stone steps. 
We are to have a spacious hall running the length 
of the house to entertain famous guests and to re- 
ceive the Indian sachems. The rooms are ar- 
ranged in suites and are to have folding doors and 
wainscots planed from English oak. We have 
already sent from England the oaken capital for 
the porch, decorated with the carving of a vine and 
bunch of grapes. 

We have planned also all the furnishings and 
some have already gone by ship — high-backed 
carved chairs and spider tables of the finest oak for 
me, and leather chairs for my husband; cushions 
and curtains of satin, camlet, damask and striped 
linen; a sideboard with a full service of silver, 
cups and tankards, bowls and dishes, tea-pots, 
salt-cellars and silver forks; blue and white china, 



OUR MANOR OF PENNSBURY 171 

a complete set of Tonbridge ware, a great quantity 
of table clothes and napkins — in fact all that my 
heart could wish. 

And the gardens. O, how we loved to talk 
about the gardens ! We will make them the won- 
der of the colony — lawns, shrubberies and flower 
beds on all sides, a broad walk lined with poplars 
to the river's brink and a flight of stone steps and 
terraces to the water, and the most beautiful wild 
flowers to be found in the country and everywhere 
stately old forest trees. And then for traveling — 
a family coach, a light calesh and a sedan chair, 
and for the river a splendid barge of six oars. 
This will be our home, our beautiful home, in the 
happy new world. My dear husband writes me 
that it is almost ready, and I am full eager to go 
to this paradise by the flowing river. 

He writes in letters to me that he has already 
traveled through much of the wilderness and has 
wandered along the banks of the Susquehanna 
and as far as Conestoga. He has lived much with 
the Indians, partaking of their simple fare and 
asking them many questions through a Swede 
named Svenson who knows their language, having 
been born at Upland on the Delaware and know- 
ing the Indians well since his boyhood. Some- 



172 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

times he lodges with the Indians in their huts of 
bark, but if he finds that these are not cleanly, he 
uses his own tent which he takes along. The 
Indians seem very fond of him and are always 
crowding around him, bringing game and fish and 
wild fruits and berries. 

My husband is such a great lover of nature. 
We love country life in England, so much 
more than city, and on this first voyage to America, 
he writes in his letters about the trees and the 
plants, the climate and the woods and the many 
open spaces that have been old Indian fields. He 
tells me of the elks, the wild turkeys, pheasants, 
ducks, snipes, and curlews in vast numbers, the 
large oysters that they found near the bay shore 
and the fine shad and other fish which they caught 
in the river. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CALLED BACK TO ENGLAND 

SUCH bad news I have had to write to my 
loving Will for I am sadly ill and have been 
for some time, and I do want my dear husband to 
come back. I think my letters will hasten his 
coming. Things are going awry here in Eng- 
land. Our friend Algernon Sidney has perished 
on the block; Shaftsbury and Essex are in prison; 
persecutions are raging and thousands of Quakers 
are lanquishing in bonds. Oh, that my dear hus- 
band were here! He could do so much for us. 
No one in England can so help our poor Ouakers 
in their distress. 

But what will also hasten his return, I believe, 
is the dispute with Lord Baltimore. Will writes 
me that it is imperative that he come soon in per- 
son and present his claims to the King. May that 
"soon" be very soon! 

Some of his letters to me tell of his meeting and 
conference with Lord Baltimore in Maryland. It 

173 



174 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

must have been a notable and dignified scene there 
in the wilderness. Lord Baltimore had writ to 
him very grand letters like an emperor. I know 
my husband's answers were plain and blunt. 
Lord Baltimore (as the letters tell me) was ar- 
rayed in his finest garments and had a large retinue 
with him. They met on the West River in 
Maryland near the capital at St. Mary's. They 
talked long over the boundary matter but could 
not settle it, and referred it all back again to the 
king and his council, and so parted amicably. On 
this visit, my husband crossed Chesapeake Bay to 
the eastern shore and held a meeting of Friends 
on the Choptank. 

My husband's letters explain to me the bound- 
ary matter that he and Lord Baltimore have still 
in dispute. He says that in the beginning he 
made a geographical error of about seventeen 
miles in his location of a southern boundary. 
This was due to the ofRcial map which he used 
which showed the fortieth parallel, as stipulated 
in his grant, running much further south than it 
really does and as they discovered by later maps. 
They had used Captain John Smith's map instead 
of the newer Dutch chart of the Delaware or the 
still later map made by Augustine Herrman. It 



CALLED BACK TO ENGLAND 175 

was an error of latitude involving a quarter of a 
degree or about fifteen to seventeen geographical 
miles, but it seems very difficult to adjust the mat- 
ter with Lord Baltimore. Yet the dispute may 
have its uses. Perhaps it may bring my dear hus- 
band the more speedily to England — and to me. 

Margaret Fox during this time was exceeding 
kind to me. As she stayed with us she told me, 
among other things, of the way in which she was 
led to link her life with dear George Fox in mar- 
riage in 1669. She was mistress of Swarthmore 
Hall and her husband Judge Fell had been dead 
eleven years. This marriage with dear George 
Fox, she said, was one of sincere affection and re- 
spect, and it was because, as she told me, "we both 
felt that thus we could be more often together 
without comment and also to strengthen mutually 
our work for the truth that we Friends preach." 
The manner of it, she told me, was as follows: 
"After we had discoursed the matter together, dear 
George Fox told me that if I was also satisfied 
with the accomplishing of it now, I should send 
for my children which I did. When they had 
come, dear George Fox asked my daughters and 
my sons-in-law if they had anything against it or 



176 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

for it, and they all severally expressed their satis- 
faction therewith. Then he asked me if I had ful- 
filled my husband's will to my children. I an- 
swered that the children knew that I had, where- 
upon he asked them whether if their mother mar- 
ried they should lose by it, and he asked me very 
earnestly whether I had done anything in lieu of 
it which might answer to the children. The 
children said very quickly that I had fulfilled all 
that was in their hearts and desired me to speak 
no more of it. He told them that he was plain 
and would have all things done plainly, and that 
he sought not any outward advantage to himself 
in this, but only the progress and prosperity of the 
cause of Truth. We took each other in marriage, 
she continued, in the Friends' Meeting-house at 
Broad Mead, Bristol, in which city he happened 
to be at the time while I was on a visit to one of 
my married daughters residing there, and then we 
went together to Oldstone, where taking leave of 
each other in the Lord, we parted, betaking our- 
selves each to our several services. I went home- 
wards to the North and dear George Fox passed 
on in the work of the Lord as before." So Mar- 
garet Fox told me the story. I think she is one 
of the loveliest and most wonderful of women; 



CALLED BACK TO ENGLAND 177 

she is beautiful to look upon and of a marvelous 
mind. She hath a spirit and courage most per- 
severing and undaunted, well worthy of the dear 
and great George Fox. 

While I was most desperately ill some weeks 
ago I wrote to ask our good friend Thomas Ell- 
wood to come over and help direct my husband's 
business here. And this he was most ready to do 
for he was always friendly and lived not far from 
Worminghurst, but at that very time he had a 
singular trouble of his own. It seems that a book 
of his which had been circulating in the neighbor- 
hood had got into the hands of Sir Benjamin 
Tichborne, a stupid justice of the peace who 
thought it dangerous. Ellwood was about to go 
before the magistrates to own his book and take 
the blame when the messenger from me arrived, 
telling of my desperate illness. It was likely that 
he would be detained from coming, but going to 
the magistrates he acknowledged the book and 
then showed them my note. Immediately (as he 
told me) "I observed a sensible alteration in the 
magistrate, and when I had done speaking, he said 
he was very sorry for Madame Penn's illness of 
whose virtues and worth he spoke very highly, but 
not more highly than was her due," he added. 



178 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Then the magistrate told him that for my sake he 
would do what he could to further Thomas Ell- 
wood's suit if he pledged his word to appear when 
called upon which he was glad to do. So he was 
allowed to leave and got to Worminghurst that 
day, and was of real help in our affairs. 

Now I have heard that the brig Endeavor has 
cast anchor at Shoreham and that my dear hus- 
band is on board. I think I shall feel well 
enough to go down and meet him at the port. It 
will be a goodly medicine to see his face once 
more. 

Yes, I have been able to go. I met him at our 
Sussex port and I was so joyful to see him. As 
we held each other in loving embrace, once more 
we thanked God. 

What happy days we are having now at Worm- 
inghurst! How he does romp with the children 
— Springett, little Will and Lettie! They have 
all grown amazingly and he is so delighted to be 
with them again. 

He told us more at this time about the beautiful 
City of Brotherly Love which is building up so 



CALLED BACK TO ENGLAND 179 

rapidly and of our wonderful new home of Penns- 
bury manor by the flowing Delaware. He de- 
lighted to talk about the fruits and the flowers, 
the birds and the fishes and especially of his 
friends the Indians. He told us that just before 
he came back to England, he summoned the chiefs 
of all the Indian tribes in his vicinity to Penns- 
bury and concluded with each tribe a separate 
treaty of peace. He told them that he was going 
beyond the seas for a little while, but would return 
to them again if the Great Spirit permitted him 
to live. He begged of them to drink no more fire- 
water and forbade his own people to sell them 
brandy and rum. He counseled with them about 
the ways of honest trade and husbandry, and he 
obtained from them a new promise that they 
would live at peace and amity with each other 
and with the white men, his friends and children. 
Especially does he love to talk to us of his new 
city of Philadelphia. His hopes and dreams seem 
all centered in it. And now when so much is dark 
and discouraging in England he feels that this 
happy city will become more and more a refuge 
to all the weary and oppressed, a place of bright- 
ness and hope, a haven of safety and peace. He 
has left faithful commissioners in charge of af- 



i8o A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

fairs, headed by Thomas Lloyd, for our cousin 
Colonel Markham is now in London. I love to 
read over and over the parting letter that he wrote 
and sent from shipboard to this dear city of his 
heart. It breathes such wisdom and affection. 
Could any one else have penned kindlier words 
than these with which the letter ends — "And 
thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this 
province, named before thou wert born, what 
love, what care, what service and what travail has 
there been to bring thee forth and preserve thee 
from such as would abuse and defile thee! My 
soul prays to God for thee that thou mayst stand 
in the day of trial, that thy children may be 
blessed of the Lord, and thy people saved by his 
power !" 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A gUAKER AT THE KING's COURT 

ASKED myself why do I keep this journal^ 
Is it because my mother always kept a jour- 
nal likewise and my grandmother Lady Springett 
before her and I follow in their steps'? Or is it 
for a solace and joy for my own soul, or per- 
chance, to furnish pleasant reading for my chil- 
dren in after days and a testimony to God's lead- 
ing in my life"? 

When my husband left Philadelphia he fully 
expected to be back there again within a year, tak- 
ing me and all his family with him and all the 
household goods endeared by association or other- 
wise worth the cost of transport. 

But strange things have happened in England, 
or, as I ought to say, the Lord has singularly 
opened the way for new work for us. 

Last night (second month, 1685) the news 

came to us that King Charles II has breathed his 

181 



i82 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

last. My dear husband had been to see him and 
the Duke of York at New Market a short time 
before. They had received him most kindly and 
assured him that justice should be done about his 
boundary dispute with Lord Baltimore. I can- 
not say that I am sorry to see this reign of King 
Charles ended. It has been a time of sadness and 
shame, for vice and folly have reared their heads 
in the highest places. The highest rank so-called 
of the nobility has been filled with rakes and wan- 
tons. The honor of the country has been sold. 
The enemies of freedom and faith have triumphed. 
Persecutions have raged throughout the land. 
Only yesterday my husband counted up the fami- 
lies that have been ruined in this reign because of 
their political and religious opinions and there 
were more than fifteen thousand, while not less 
than four thousand of those that were cast into 
jails have died. 

And now a new King has come in quietly, our 
old friend the Duke of York, who is to be called 
King James II. Fortunately he is well disposed 
toward my good husband and he has often asserted 
that he is in favor of religious toleration. 

The condition of the Quakers is perhaps in 
their worst plight at this time. It seems a duty 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 183 

therefore for my husband to use his friendship and 
influence at the court to mitigate the condition of 
these suffering people. He knows that King 
James is in favor of religious toleration because 
such a law would include papists as well as 
Quakers, and the King himself is a faithful mem- 
ber of the Papist church, although sworn as mon- 
arch to defend the Protestant faith in England. 
Let us pray God that this new reign may be peace- 
ful and prosperous and bring many good things 
to God's people. 



Yes, I am sure it will be so. I write this later 
note to say that my dear husband has waited upon 
the King at Whitehall to remind him of his good 
will toward the cause of religious freedom and to 
beg his assistance toward freeing the suffering 
Quakers and others who are in jail. The King 
was most affable with him and talked with his 
old cordiality and frankness. When my husband 
asked relief for the poor Quakers who were even 
then lanquishing in the prisons of Marshalsea, 
Newgate and the Gatehouse, the King took him 
into his private closet where they remained in talk 
a long time. The King said that he could not 



i84 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

make any definite promise to help until he had 
first fixed the day and arranged for his corona- 
tion. But the King was even better than his 
word. Alm.ost immediately he caused all reli- 
gious persecution against our people to cease. He 
opened the prison gates to every person who was 
confined there for refusing to take oaths of al- 
legiance. Twelve hundred Friends obtained 
their freedom by this act of royal justice. 

But there is still great work to do. The laws 
against the Friends and other religious people still 
exist although tempered by the King's mercy and 
at any time they may be put into rigorous execu- 
tion. The ecclesiastical party is still strong and 
violent and threatens new plans of retaliation in 
the House of Commons. So that my husband 
now feels that Providence has placed him near the 
throne and in favor with the King for a great 
work of mediation and mercy to all distressed re- 
ligious people and to obtain real justice and re- 
ligious liberty for England. 

My husband can be severe when he deals with 
rogues. He told me how he dealt with the Earl 
of Arran. Sir Robert Stuart of Coltness had been 
in exile as a Presbyterian and on his return he 
found that on some pretext the Earl of Arran had 




From ^'fht 1 ainilii of Wdliavi Peiin" by Howard M. Jenkins, 

FOUR OF WILLIAM PENN'S GRANDCHILDREN. 
Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

The picture shows the children of Thomas Penn — Juliana, Louisa Hannah, 
John, and Granville. 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 185 

seized and was in possession of his land and castle. 
Sir Robert brought his case to my husband, for 
him to intercede with the King, but he went di- 
rectly to Arran and said — "What is this, friend 
James, that I hear of thee ? Thou hast taken pos- 
session of Coltness's castle. Thou knowest it is 
not thine." Then Arran tried to explain — "That 
estate I paid a great price for. I received no 
other reward for my expenses and troublesome em- 
bassy to France except this estate." Then my 
husband looked him in the eye sternly and said — 
"All very well, friend James, but of this assure 
thyself that if thou dost not give me this moment 
an order on thy chamberlain for two hundred 
pounds to Coltness to carry him down to his native 
country, and a hundred a year to subsist on till 
matters are adjusted, I will make it as many thou- 
sands out of thy way with the King." And the 
duke knew he meant what he said and complied 
immediately. 

At many a company now-a-days we meet the 
genial and witty Samuel Pepys. He is the lover 
of music and fashion, but he has an unsavory repu- 
tation as a purveyor of gossip and is thought to be 
somewhat untruthful. He loveth to turn foolish 
tales as a sweet morsel under his tongue. I avoid 



i86 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

him as much as possible but my husband is always 
courteous to him. 

It may reveal the good nature of King James 
and his genial attitude to my husband to relate 
that one day at audience my husband kept his hat 
on, seeing which the King promptly took off his 
own, explaining — "It is the custom here for only 
one man to wear his hat." Thus the King, al- 
though a follower and a devotee of etiquette, is 
always prone to indulge my husband whom he 
dearly loves, both for his father's sake and for 
his own. Truly he is a most agreeable gentle- 
man. 

At this time, on account of court business, we 
have to live in London. So my husband has 
rented Holland House from the Earl of War- 
wick, and our life, I fear, becomes rather more 
expensive than we had expected, for we must keep 
a coach and four, and have other luxuries. The 
house is large and commodious and we have many 
visitors. A constant stream of people, Ameri- 
cans, Quakers, and others seem to come contin- 
ually to my husband for help, since they know 
that he has great influence with the King. There 
are times when as many as two hundred, I should 
say, are in attendance at his door. Among others 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 187 

whom he has helped, my husband interceded for 
his friend, the philosopher, John Locke, then in 
exile. He secured his pardon from the King, but 
Locke refused to accept it. He also stood by the 
city merchant, Henry Cornish, who was accused 
of treason. He also stood by Elizabeth Gaunt, 
a true hearted woman and a brave one, who had 
been condemned for sheltering traitors who had 
fled for refuge to her house. He stood by her and 
comforted her even as she was being executed. 

Truly these are hard and bitter days in Eng- 
land, because of the Duke of Monmouth's rebel- 
lion, and Judge Jeffreys' terrible slaughter in re- 
venge has made the land bloody and most sad. 
My husband has been going hither and yon, try- 
ing to stem the tide of the bloody vengeance, but 
he can do only a little. He wrote to me yester — 
"About three hundred were hanged in divers 
towns in the west and a thousand are to be trans- 
ported. I begged twenty of the King to be sent 
to my colony. Elizabeth Gaunt, burned at Ty- 
burn, for the high treason of hiding a refugee in 
her house, died most composedly and fearless, for 
she felt she suffered in God's cause. I saw her 
die," he said, "she laid the straw about her for 
burning her speedily and behaved herself in such 



i88 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

a manner that all who saw her were moved to 
tears. She was surely God's martyr for that re- 
ligion which we all love." Hundreds of others 
he helped in various ways. 

All this time he was following steadily his deep 
and strong sense of duty and was working at the 
great task of gaining religious liberty for Eng- 
land. Constantly by speech and writing he was 
trying to influence public opinion. The chief ob- 
stacle was the ignorance and bigotry of court and 
parliament and he strove earnestly to bring them 
to the right views for an enlightened policy. He 
wrote his pamphlet called "Persuasion to Modera- 
tion" as a means of public education. It was an 
able and learned history of the good effects of tol- 
eration as it had been tried in other places and 
cities and in other times. It was particularly ad- 
dressed to the King and the council, and aroused 
much interest. From the King it brought another 
act of mercy by which thousands of prisoners were 
released from jail. But the harsh laws were still 
in force and to change those laws and make them 
right and just was the aim of the friends of tolera- 
tion. At length at the suggestion and persuasion 
of his friends the King determined to use what he 
thought was his royal right even without the ad- 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 189 

vice or consent of Parliament and he issued (on 
fourth month 4th, 1687) ^ gracious "Declaration 
for Liberty of Conscience." It was in itself a wise 
and noble measure, and although some doubted 
whether the King on his own authority had the 
right to do it, yet all friends of toleration hoped 
that it would stand. I know that my husband 
thought that now his great work was accomplished 
and that his happy dream for England was about 
to come true. 

My husband has won over many excellent and 
noble men for his cause. For you may under- 
stand that he knew the most learned men in Eng- 
land and many of them intimately. He was born 
and bred among the noblest people of England, 
and lived freely and equally with them. He is 
an intimate with kings and princes. He has 
traveled much in foreign lands, in France, in Italy, 
in Holland and in Germany. But at the same 
time he loves the lowliest people and is affable and 
friendly with the humblest and the poorest. 

My own convictions of the worth of my dear 
Will's labors is confirmed by a letter recently re- 
ceived by an English friend from a Dutch scholar 
defending my husband from the aspersions which 
some people are now making against him. This 



190 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Dutch scholar knows him well, and thinks it 
strange that any English people should traduce 
him. He writes — "At such a time no auxiliary- 
could be so valuable as a friend at court, possess- 
ing the unshaken confidence of the King. Wil- 
liam Penn is now greatly in favor with the King. 
The King loves him as a personal and confidential 
friend and imparts to him many of his secrets and 
counsels. He often honors him with his com- 
pany in private, discoursing with him of various 
affairs and that not for one but many hours to- 
gether, and often delaying to hear the best of his 
peers who at the same time are waiting for an 
audience. Lately one of these being envious and 
impatient of delay and taking it as an effront to 
see the other more regarded than himself, adven- 
tured to take the freedom to tell his majesty that 
when he met with Penn he thought little of his 
nobles. The King made no other reply than that 
Penn always talked frankly and well and he heard 
him willingly. Penn being so highly favored 
thus serves the Quakers, and all those of religion, 
by any reasonable office that he can." 

O, how Friends have been persecuted in Eng- 
land for their religion for almost forty years from 
the time of the civil war to the present! Thou- 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 191 

sands of them have been despoiled of their prop- 
erty, other thousands have been confined in lone- 
some prisons and more than five thousand have 
died from disease and exposure to ill treatment in 
these imprisonments. King Charles II has re- 
leased about four hundred Quakers from prison 
and King James II has set free about thirteen hun- 
dred of them, but hundreds more were neglected 
and left to die in their dungeons. I thank God 
that these martyrs of the faith have borne a clear 
testimony, their sufferings have not suppressed the 
faith but rather increased it, for their heroism and 
strength of character have proved a powerful wit- 
ness for the truth of God. 

I do not hold that we Friends have been blame- 
less. We have sometimes entered too eagerly into 
violent controversies with others and some of our 
people have been over zealous in entering churches 
to interrupt services and stop sermons by their 
urgent testimony. They have even at times gone 
to excesses in bearing testimony in unseemly ways, 
but their earnestness and sincerity have been their 
excuse. They were fools for Christ's sake. 



To-day my dear husband went to visit a par- 



192 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

ticular dear Friend for the last time. He told 
me how tender was his parting with this Friend 
Thomas Loe for he was with him at his death. 
Taking him by the hand, he said, Thomas Loe 
spoke thus — "Dear heart, bear thy cross, stand 
faithful for God and bear thy testimony in thy 
day and generation, and God will give thee an 
eternal crown of glory that none shall ever take 
from thee. There is not another way, bear thy 
cross, stand faithful for God." 

This Thomas Loe, who has meant so much m 
Will's life, belonged to a well-to-do family of 
Lichfield. He was, as I was told, a Presbyterian 
and had been sent to Oxford University when he 
was about seventeen, but at the beginning of 
his third year at Oxford he was arrested for his 
religious opinions and expelled and soon after- 
wards became a preacher. He was a gifted 
minister and scholar of our faith. Indeed he was 
the first to preach our faith in the Gaelic language. 
The principal field of his labors was Ireland. He 
was a polished and effective speaker and was also 
strong in pathos, appealing to the sympathy of 
his hearers. When Will first heard him he had 
come back to preach at Oxford and again had been 
thrust into prison, and on his release Will listened 



A QUAKER AT THE KING'S COURT 193 

to him as he spoke to the students and it was an 
epoch in his life. 

But to come back to to-day. My husband is 
sure of the honesty of King James, for he has been 
true to the trust which his father the Admiral has 
reposed in him and he has been most frank and 
earnest and repeated in his assertions of belief in 
religious tolerance. So that my husband is blind 
to all his faults and has an implicit faith in him. 
The King also seems to be personally very fond 
of him and believes in his sincerity and honesty of 
purpose. They are in fact, true and loving 
friends. 

Yet even in the midst of all these struggles and 
triumphs, he knows the vanity and uncertainty of 
it all and he longs to go to America. But he is in 
too deep with the King to get out. He feels that 
the Lord has thrust him into this special work at 
court, even as Esther at the court of King Ahas- 
uerus, in order to save his people, and to bring 
religious liberty to England. He cannot and will 
not desert his duty. 

But oh, how he longs to go to America again! 
Often he sighs — "There is nothing my soul 
breathes more for in this world, next to my dear 



194 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

family's life, than that I may see Pennsylvania 
again." 

He wrote yesterday to his steward James Har- 
rison, who waits for him at Pennsbury Manor — 
'Tor my coming over, cheer up the people. My 
heart is with you, and my soul and love is after 
you, but the great undertakings that crowd me 
hinder me yet. The Lord help us in this dark 
day in England." 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 

I CANNOT tell all the story — it is too long — 
but only the impression that comes to me 
from the stirring events of these days. 

My dear husband now in this summer of 1686 
made a third journey to Holland and Germany. 
He told the seeking people there — especially the 
Mennonites, the Schwenkfelders, and other Ger- 
man sects — concerning his free and Christian 
provinces and urged them to emigrate, and many 
promised to do so. But what interested me most 
on this visit, was my husband's interview with 
William, Prince of Orange, whose wife the 
Princess Mary, as eldest daughter of King James 
I of England, is prospective heir to the English 
throne. 

It showed King James' confidence in him that 
he entrusted him with this very important diplo- 
matic mission — to wait upon the Prince, who may 
some day be the King's successor in England and 

195 



196 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

to urge him to join in a movement for full reli- 
gious toleration. So he went to the Hague and 
had several interviews with the Prince and the 
Princess. He was a guest at the palace for sev- 
eral days. They were perfectly frank with him. 
My husband tried to persuade Prince William at 
the suggestion of King James to agree to full re- 
ligious and spiritual freedom for all, even Cath- 
olics, and while he found him a sincere Protestant, 
believing in religious liberty with all his heart, the 
Prince confessed that he is strenuously opposed 
to the enfranchisement of Romanists, but, my hus- 
band believes, if ever he becomes a ruler in Eng- 
land, we shall at least have religious toleration, 
even if civil equality may not come for all reli- 
gions. 

But now it seems that King James has gone 
too far and fast to suit the temper of England 
which is jealous and suspicious. Many say that 
he has done what he has no right to do and has 
usurped the powers of the Parliament in this mat- 
ter. Many seem to see also in this goodly Decla- 
ration for Liberty of Conscience some plot to get 
the Romanists back again into power in England. 
Above all they cannot forgive the fact that he 
himself, the ruler of a Protestant realm and sworn 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 197 

to defend its faith, is a Romanist and openly goes 
to mass. Neither can they forgive the fact that 
his best friend is the King of France who is an- 
other Romanist and that many of the courtiers at 
Whitehall are also Jesuits and Papists. And 
soon the outcry is heard and the rumor spreads 
rapidly that my dear husband is also another 
Jesuit in disguise. One ground for the suspicion 
is this: It happened that one day my husband 
was traveling in the country in a stage coach and 
some one noting his love of learning and of let- 
ters asked how such a thing happened in a Quaker. 
He answered — "I suppose it comes of my having 
been educated at Saumur in France." This name 
sounded somewhat as St. Omer the Jesuit Semin- 
ary and so it was reported that he had been edu- 
cated at a Jesuit Seminary; further that he had 
taken holy orders at Rome ; and that he now reg- 
ularly officiated at mass in the royal chapel at 
Whitehall. 

Some accuse him of incredible things. One of 
his friends told him that the people said his posi- 
tion and influence with the King were too con- 
siderable for a papist of an ordinary kind, and 
therefore, that he must surely be a Jesuit. The 
fact that he is a layman and has a wife and chil- 



198 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

dren count for nothing. They say this is by a 
special dispensation from the Pope. The gossips 
even seem to find support in the silence of Arch- 
bishop Tillotson whom they consulted. So the 
clamor of false representation went on. My hus- 
band was compelled to deny distinctly that he was 
a Papist, and Archbishop Tillotson also wrote a 
disavowal but still the rumor persisted, fostered 
by his enemies. 

It was in the midst of the growing opposition 
and the suspicion of Roman intrigue that the King 
again (in fourth month, 1688) commanded all the 
clergy to read the Declaration of Liberty of Con- 
science from their pulpits. Many of them stoutly 
rebelled — and then the storm broke. Seven of 
the chief bishops publicly remonstrated against 
the King's order and were immediately arrested 
and sent to the Tower. Then the crisis came with 
headlong speed. The King's life was threatened 
and realizing that the fatal hour had arrived, he 
fled to France. His friends and ministers also 
speedily took flight and quickly the opposition 
party brought in Prince William of Orange from 
Holland and proclaimed him as King, and thus 
the reign of William and Mary began. 

My husband, although one of the closest friends 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 199 

of the King who had fled, remained in London in 
spite of many warnings. He was nearly the only 
one left of any who had been near the throne. 
He was almost immediately summoned before the 
council. 

The hearing was held in the presence of King 
William. The King greeted him pleasantly and 
mentioned their former interviews at The Hague. 
My husband frankly confessed that he loved the 
fugitive King James, and as he had loved him in 
his prosperity, he could not hate him in his ad- 
versity, but that he did not, even for a moment, 
think of endeavoring to help restore to him that 
crown which had fallen from his head. 

Ah, how bold and brave my dear husband was ! 
He told them in his examination before the Privy 
Council that he had done nothing but what he 
could answer for, before God and all the princes 
of the world; that he loved his country and the 
Protestant religion above his life and had never 
acted against either; that all he had ever aimed 
at in his public endeavors was none other than 
what the present king had declared for, that is, 
religious liberty; that King James had always 
been his friend and his father's friend, and that in 
gratitude, he himself was the king's, and did ever 



200 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

as much as in him lay to influence him to his true 
interest. And thereupon my husband was re- 
leased. 

They took security from him for six thousand 
pounds, for his appearance when wanted, and we 
left London and went down together to Worming- 
hurst to retire forever from the tumults and trou- 
bles of the courts and to lead a peaceful and serene 
life in the love and fear of God. 

You may remember that this William of 
Orange is the great grandson of William the Si- 
lent, founder of the Dutch Republic, and of the 
house of Orange. He was born in 1650 and be- 
came a ruler of the Netherlands at the age of 
twenty-two. His mother was Mary Stuart, a 
daughter of Charles I of England, and his wife, 
a daughter of King James. He is now the trusted 
defender of the Protestant faith of Europe. He 
is a statesman, but above all a soldier. He is 
doing great things for England. 

And now (this is 1688) one great object of my 
husband's life is accomplished. England at last 
has religious toleration, by the gracious act of King 
William III, and Friends are now allowed to af- 
firm, instead of taking an oath. Strange that it 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 201 

could not have come by our friend King James. 
And now also, we have the Bill of Rights, which 
gives us freedom of speech. It is a great day for 
England and the people. We live our quiet life 
at Worminghurst now, and quietly rejoice in what 
God hath wrought. 

But my dear husband was not allowed to re- 
main in quiet. Suddenly he was called to the 
deathbed of our leader, dear George Fox, on first 
month I3th,^ 1691, and over his grave at Bunhill 
Fields, London, he spoke long and earnestly. 
For both of us loved dear George Fox, mighty 
prophet of our faith; in labors most abundant, in 
courage wonderful, in gifts of heavenly wisdom 
and spiritual insight truly a prophet of God. He 
being dead yet speaketh in a thousand other lives 
who have caught his spirit. My husband bore 
faithful and eloquent testimony to him. But that 
funeral became of strange consequence. Sus- 
picions were again aroused against my husband by 
his public appearance and also by the fact that his 
name without his consent was attached to a paper 
for King James' return. Warrants were issued 
by the council charging him with treason. Rather 

1 This date was originally written tenth of the previous 
year, as the old style put it. — Editor. 



202 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

than face again such iniquitous charges and more 
injustice, and rather than be worn out with his 
troubles he went into the most secret retirement. 
His whereabouts were known only to me and a 
few of his most intimate friends. I may say here 
that his hidden dwelling-place was in the heart of 
London and also that he often came to us at 
Worminghurst. But he did not help his enemies 
in their search for him and for three years he did 
not appear in public. 

Yet I may say that he was busier than ever with 
his pen. Among his writings done at this time, 
for he now had uninterrupted leisure for thinking 
and writing, were "A Brief Account of the People 
Called Quakers," which was an intimate account 
of the beliefs and customs and purposes of the 
Friends as he knew them. 

And while he is absent I keep by me and read 
parts of another book he is writing, called "Some 
Fruits of Solitude." This book makes him seem 
so near to me. It has in it such a kind and wise, 
peaceful and beautiful spirit. The book begins — 
"The author blesseth God for his retirement and 
kisses the gentle hand that led him into it, for 
though it should prove barren to the world, it can 
never do so to him. He has now had some time 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 203 

which he can call his own — a property he was 
never so much master of before — in which he has 
taken a view of himself and the world and ob- 
served wherein he hath hit and missed the mark. 
And he verily thinks, were he to live his life over 
again, he could not only, with God's grace serve 
him, but his neighbor and himself better than he 
hath done, and have seven years of his life to 
spare." He felt sure that God was with him even 
in all these sad days while he was absent from 
his home. I think this volume will be one of his 
best, so rich is it in quaint and wise maxims 
and full of a happy and beautiful philosophy 
of life. 

Let me copy a few words from this noble 
book: 

"They only have a right to censure who have a 
heart to help. 

"Love labor: if thou dost not want it for food, 
thou wilt for physic. 

"To delay justice is injustice. 

"The truest end of life is to find the life that 
never ends. 

"To do evil that good may come of it, is bun- 
gling in politics as well as in morals." 

These are some of his maxims that I love to 



204 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

read over and over: "Never marry but for love; 
but see that thou lovest what is lovely. 

"There can be no friendship where there is no 
freedom. 

"Nor can we fall below the arms of God, how 
low so ever it be we fall." 

Some of his maxims on education, especially the 
education of children, seemed to me so wise and 
true. For instance these: 

"We are anxious to make our children scholars, 
not men ; to talk rather than to know. 

"The first thing obvious to children is what is 
sensible, that is, perceived by the senses, and these 
things we make no part of their rudiments in edu- 
cation. We press their memory too soon and puz- 
zle, strain, and load them with words and rules; 
to know grammar and rhetoric and a strange lan- 
guage or two that ten to one may never be useful 
to them, leaving their natural genius for mechani- 
cal and physical or natural knowledge unculti- 
vated and neglected, which if cultivated would be 
of exceeding use and pleasure to them through 
the whole course of their life. To be sure lan- 
guages are not to be despised or neglected, but 
natural things are still to be preferred. Children 
had rather be making tools and instruments to 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 205 

play, shaping, drawing, framing, and building 
than getting some rules of propriety of speech 
by heart. And those also would follow later with 
more judgment and less trouble and time." 

His maxims on religion in this book on "Some 
Fruits of Solitude" give our fundamental princi- 
ples as Friends. Let me quote some of these: 

"The less form in religion the better, since God 
is a spirit. 

"We can never be the better for our religion if 
our neighbor be the worse for it. 

"I know no religion which destroys courtesy, 
civility and kindness. 

"I scorn that religion which is not worth suf- 
fering for and able to sustain those that are af- 
flicted for it. 

"Religion is the fear of God, and its demon- 
stration good works; and faith is the root of 
both. 

"Some folk think that they may scold, rail, hate, 
rob, and kill, too, so that it be but for God's sake. 
But nothing in us, unlike Him, can please 
Him." 

"To be like Christ then is to be a Christian. 

The book is so full of simplicity and kindness, 
it is so cheerful and brotherly, so serious and sensi- 



2o6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

ble, so rich in the spirit of one who is living for 
Christ and his brethren. 

He has also written in this quiet time of retire- 
ment a noble "Essay Toward the Present and Fu- 
ture Peace of Europe," in which he shows the 
inevitable causes of war and points out the only 
rational and Christian way of peace for the na-* 
tions. 

He proposes that just as England has its Par- 
liament, France its States-General, and Germany 
its Diet, each in its own sphere, looking for the 
national over the individual interests, so Europe 
should have its international congress looking 
after the interest of all the nations. He would 
have all disputes among the nations referred to 
this sovereign council and its decision to be car- 
ried out by the united power of Europe. 

In this plan for creating a general parliament 
for arbitration it is expressly stated that its judg- 
ment should be made so binding that if any gov- 
ernment offer its case for decision and do not then 
abide by it the other governments, parties to the 
tribunal, shall compel it. 

This essay on the Peace of Europe seems to 
me singularly high and noble. I wonder if it 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 207 

shall ever come to pass? I have thought of it 
much. The means of peace, as he sees it, is jus- 
tice, and the means of justice is government and 
the means of government is a united power and 
authority. He believes that the same authority 
for peace and justice which is enforced between 
citizen and citizen ought also to be enforced be- 
tween nation and nation.^ 

Now I am no statesman — I leave this to greater 
and more learned minds — ^but such a plan as this 
seemeth to me both wise and Christian. 



1 These are his very words in this essay. I quote them be- 
cause of present interest in a new League to Enforce Peace. 

"Now if the sovereign princes of Europe for love of peace 
and order would agree to meet by their stated deputies in a 
general parliament and there establish rules of justice to observe 
one to another and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three 
years at the furthest, or as they shall see cause and to be styled 
the sovereign parliament of Europe before which shall be 
brought all differences between one sovereign and another which 
cannot be made up of private embassies before the sessions 
begin, and that if any of the sovereignties that constitute these 
imperial states shall refuse to submit their claim or pretensions 
to them, or to abide and perform the judgment thereof and 
instead seek their remedy by arms or delay their compliance be- 
yond the times prefixt in their resolutions, all the other 
sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission 
and performance of the sentence with damages to the suffering 
party, and charges to the sovereignties that oblige their submis- 
sion, then, peace would be procured and continued in Europe." 
—Editor. 



2o8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Oh, these anxious years of hiding and conceal- 
ing, and so unlike him who has all the time been 
so bold before the world. Now he is hunted up 
and down and can never be allowed to live quietly 
in city or country. Sometimes he lives in pri- 
vate lodgings, in London, and sometimes here in 
the sanctuary of my solitude, and sometimes I go 
with him where he goes. But I am weakly at 
present and cannot go often. It makes it so hard, 
for he knows that he is innocent and often he says, 
"My privacy is not because men have sworn truly 
but falsely against me, for wicked men have laid 
in wait for me and false witnesses have laid 
charges against me." 

This was indeed a sorrowful period when he 
determined that for the time being the path of 
prudence was the wisest way. 

He suffered all these things because he was a 
faithful friend to King James. He would not 
disbelieve the royal word of one who had been true 
to him nor would he make any easy change of his 
allegiance. He was loyal to the new government 
but loyal also to his old friendship, and so his 
enemies persecuted him, but it seemed to me that 
he was never in all his life more honest, more 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 209 

brave, or more lovable than in these years of 
silence, seclusion, and heavy trouble. 

Methinks the friendship of kings is a perilous 
heritage. 



CHAPTER XX 

MANIFOLD BEREAVEMENTS 

THE record of this journal, so long kept by 
my dear mother, must now be taken up by 
me, Letitia, the only daughter. For mother is 
very ill. It grieves me also to think that my 
chronicle must be one of many sorrows. Father 
is a fugitive and exile. He goes from place to 
place but is rarely seen. He comes at times to us 
at Worminghurst to see his poor sick wife and his 
ailing son Springett. He comes by stealth at 
dead of night. 

Another crushing blow has also followed. His 
province of Pennsylvania has been taken away 
from him by the council, and placed under mili- 
tary control, along with the province of New 
York, for these are troubled days for the Ameri- 
can colonies by peril from the French and In- 
dians. Father's whole fortune and hope are in 
this province, but now his rents are stopped and 

210 



MANIFOLD BEREAVEMENTS 211 

his timber is being cut and sold without his con- 
sent. What shall we do? All father says is — 
"God seeth in secret and will one day reward 
openly." Somehow father believes that all things 
will work out right. He is saddened but still 
hopeful. 

But my dear loving mother is completely broken 
in health. She has never been herself since my 
father was forced to quit his home and go into his 
secret exile. Often she followed him into his hid- 
ing places and consoled him, but ever she was 
drooping and failing, and at last at Hoddesven, 
under a strange but kindly roof, her troubles bore 
her down and she died (in second month, 1694). 
The end was very quiet and peaceful and we laid 
her to rest among the grassy mounds at Jordan's 
meeting house near the lovely village where she 
first set her maiden eyes on my father. 

I think the noblest tribute to her is the me- 
morial written by my father, from which I may 
transcribe here a few sentences that I especially 
love. He writes: 

"At several times in her last hours she did pray 
very sweetly and in all her weakness she mani- 
fested the most equal, undaunted and resigned 
spirit, as well as in all other respects. She was 



212 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

excellent both as wife, mother, friend, and neigh- 
bor. 

"To the children she said: 'I never desired 
any great things for you except that you may fear 
the Lord and walk in His truth.' 

"She would not suffer me to neglect any public 
meeting upon her account, saying often, 'Go, my 
dearest, do not hinder any good for me; I desire 
thee to go; I shall see thee again.' 

"About three hours before the end, she said, 'I 
have cast my care upon the Lord; give my dear 
love to all friends.' She quietly expired in my 
arms, her head upon my bosom." 

And in a letter to a friend he wrote : "In great 
peace and sweetness she departed, her gain, but 
our incomparable loss, being one of ten thousand." 

Again he said of my mother that she was "an 
excellent wife and mother, an entire and constant 
friend, of more than common capacity and greater 
modesty and humility, yet most equal and un- 
daunted in danger. A brave soul, a devout and 
consecrated spirit." 

After my dear mother's death, father was most 
disconsolate. He had lost his influence at court, 
many still thought him a Jesuit, and even the 
Friends grew cold toward him, asserting that he 



MANIFOLD BEREAVEMENTS 213 

had done wrong because he had meddled more 
with politics and the concerns of government than 
a member of their Christian body ought to do, and 
others thought that he ought to show repentance 
for having even in love, pity, or good-will as- 
sisted King James in distress, but he insisted that 
he had done nothing but what was right. 

He felt most deeply that the Lord had called 
him to the court. He believed that he was work- 
ing for true Christianity and for England. He 
said earnestly, "I have made it my province and 
business; I have followed and trusted; I took it 
for my calling and station and have kept it above 
these sixteen years." He wanted politics, that is, 
the state, the government, to serve religion in the 
largest way — religion and not merely the church. 
He conceived of religion as worship and service in 
the freest and broadest way. 

And now for two years my dear father has acted 
as companion and constant nurse to his dying 
boy, my handsome and gentle brother Springett. 
He is his almost constant companion by day and 
by night. Everything that tender nurture, paren- 
tal watchfulness and medical skill can do for him 
is being done. Springett is a darling fellow, now 



214 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

nearly twenty-one years old. He is the favorite 
of his father, and well beloved of his grandmother 
Lady Springett, who has written down for him 
the journal and memories of her early life, which 
we still have. In fact Springett is the favorite 
of us all.- He is so fervent and devout, so grace- 
ful and gentle. I believe he has in him the virtues 
of both his father and his mother, so saintly and 
so knightly is he. 

But in spite of every care Springett has grown 
worse and worse in health. Indeed he seemed 
foredoomed for an early departure, and he fell 
asleep in my father's arms on fourth month, 2nd, 
1696. Thus died my father's eldest son, most 
dear to his heart. 

Of him also, my father wrote a tender memorial 
from which I may quote a few sentences : 

"My very dear child and elder son, Springett, 
from his childhood manifested a disposition of 
goodness and more than ordinary capacity in in- 
tellect. He easily acquired a good share of learn- 
ing and mathematical knowledge, and showed a 
judgment in the use and application of these much 
above his years. 

"Being almost always near him in his illness 
and doing anything for him he wanted, he broke 



MANIFOLD BEREAVEMENTS 215 

out with much love, 'My dear father, if I live I 
will make thee amends.' At another time as I 
stood by him, he looked up upon me and said, 
'Dear father, sit by me, I love thy company and I 
know thou lovest mine, but if it be the Lord's 
will that we must part, be not troubled.' At an- 
other time he said, 'Dear father, if the Lord should 
raise me up and enable me to serve him and his 
people, then I might travel with thee sometimes 
and we might ease one another in the ministry.' 
Near the end he said to me, 'My dear father, kiss 
me. Thou art a dear father.' At the very end 
he said, 'Come life, come death, I am resigned.' 
He breathed his last on my breast, between the 
hours of nine and ten in the morning, in his one 
and twentieth year. So ended the life of my dear 
child and eldest son, and much of my comfort and 
hope. He was one of the most tender and dutiful 
as well as one of the most ingenious and virtuous 
youths I ever knew, if I may say so of my own 
child. In him I lose all that any father could lose 
in a child, since he was capable of anything that 
became a noble young man. He was my friend 
and companion, as well as a most affectionate and 
dutiful child." 

Surely it seemed for a while as if all the joys 



2i6 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

of life had passed away with the passing of his 
dear wife and of his eldest child, and in truth as 
if all his dreams had come to naught and his hopes 
had vanished with the passing also of his province 
in America away from his hands. What now was 
left to him? 



CHAPTER XXI 

AMERICA ONCE MORE 

BUT suddenly comes a gleam of hope in the 
midst of these dark days. For several of his 
noble friends take up his cause, especially the Earl 
of Rochester, Henry Sidney, and Sir John 
Trenchard, and lay his case before the King. The 
King hears it and gives him his liberty. The 
council at Westminster absolves him from every 
charge of treason and finally to his greatest joy 
he is restored to his rights in his province. Seven 
years has he been in the shadow of great trouble 
and in the sorrows of death, but now, thank the 
Lord, they are ended. And again he looks for- 
ward eagerly to America, the land of promise and 
the home of peace. 

And now father feels in this crisis that he needs 
a mother for his children and a keeper for his 
house, and considering and praying over the mat- 
ter he has selected a new helpmate in a noble 

woman whom he had long known, Hannah Cal- 

217 



2i8 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

lowhill of Bristol. They are married in that city 
(on first month, 1696) and it is the understanding 
that their future home is to be in America. But 
none of us feel that we must go at once. 

So we live at Bristol for a while and father 
makes many religious tours and writes much. 
We all rejoice that under King William and 
Queen Mary religious liberty has come at last to 
England. So that one of father's dreams is at 
last realized. Strange that it should come from 
a foreign prince whom he did not overmuch like, 
rather than from his dear friend King James, in 
whom he had so much believed and from whom 
he had hoped so much. But however it has come 
we all rejoice and I am sure that father's life-long 
struggle for it has done much to bring it about. 
Wherever father now travels, his meetings are at- 
tended by great multitudes and great results. His 
struggles, sufferings, and faithful testimony are 
known to all and his name and fame have gone to 
all the world. During these days our cousin. 
Colonel Markham, is again put in charge of the 
province and, as father believes, is ruling with 
vigor and wisdom. 

I must here record an interesting visit that 
father made the other day to a young Russian 



AMERICA ONCE MORE 219 

ruler named Peter, working in the dock yards at 
Deptford to learn the art of ship-building. My 
father spoke to him in high German, and being 
the son of a great admiral, had a long conversation 
with this ruler of Muscovy, not only about ships 
and ship building, but also about religion. The 
young Czar was eager for knowledge of every 
kind. He asked my father to tell him in a few 
words what the Quakers taught and practiced. 
So my father wrote this sentence for him — "They 
teach that men must be holy or they cannot be 
happy; that they should be few in words, peace- 
able in life, suffer wrongs, love their enemies, deny 
themselves — without which faith is false, worship 
becomes formality, and religion is mere hypoc- 
risy." The young Czar seemed to be very much 
interested and we hear has since attended the meet- 
ings of Friends at Deptford. 

And now father feels that he is ready to go to 
America again, for it is fifteen years since his first 
visit. 

He purposes that we all go with him and that 
we shall settle there for the rest of our days. So 
to-day we embarked at Cowes in the good ship 
Canterbury (on the ninth month, 9th, 1699). 



220 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Three months later, I write again. The voyage 
from Southampton to Chester on the good ship 
Canterbury was a rough, stormy time, and took 
nearly the whole three months. We were glad to 
have with us on the voyage father's secretary, 
James Logan, a pleasant and capable young man, 
a good Friend, and very congenial to us all. 

It was beautiful when we entered Delaware 
Bay during the November days. When we ar- 
rived at Chester we learned that the yellow fever 
has broken out in Philadelphia and carried off a 
number of the inhabitants, but the pestilence was 
now over and things looked brighter. The people 
at Chester sought to do honor to father and one set- 
tler named Beaven dragged an old Swedish cannon 
from a yard and fired it off in honor of the day. 
When the cannon burst and carried away the arm 
of the unfortunate man, father placed him under 
medical care and charged himself with the cost of 
curing him, but he only lingered a few months. 
When our ship reached Philadelphia, the reception 
was a very joyous one from all the people. We 
went to the meeting house, where prayers of 
thanksgiving were offered and addresses of con- 
gratulation were made. The people seemed full 
of joy that their Governor — as they called him — 



AMERICA ONCE MORE 221 

was with them once again. They had deeply 
mourned over his long absence and now they 
hoped, they said, that he would never leave them 
again. 

In Philadelphia for a month we lived at the 
house of Edward Shippen and enjoyed his hospi- 
tality. Then we moved to a most commodious 
dwelling known as the Slate Roof House, on Sec- 
ond Street, between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. 
Here we resided until the early spring, when we 
went to the mansion at Pennsbury Manor. 

I must record here that father is of such humil- 
ity that in our religious meetings he always sits 
at the lowest end of the space allotted to ministers, 
and always takes care to place on the higher seats 
above him those of humble life and lesser gifts, 
and he is always foremost to appreciate and exalt 
those who were peculiarly gifted. He is always 
seeking to encourage young men and others to 
exercise their gift of speech in meetings as the 
Spirit might lead them. 

Yet I must also chronicle he remembers the 
difference between personal humility and the 
proper dignity of office. For on certain state oc- 
casions even in Philadelphia here as the repre- 



222 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

sentative of his sovereign, he allows some cere- 
mony, marching through the streets to the opening 
of the assembly with a mace-bearer before him, 
and having an officer standing at his gate on audi- 
ence days with a long staff tipped with silver. 

Philadelphia Is pleasant enough, but Penns- 
bury Is charming. 

Yes, father loves the country life, as I do. As 
he wrote once — ''The country Is to be preferred. 
It is both the philosopher's garden and his library 
In which he reads and contemplates the power, wis- 
dom, and goodness of God." 



CHAPTER XXII 

NEW DAYS AND NEW WAYS 

OH, these wonderful days in the new world! 
Every one made much of us and it was a 
round of pleasant occasions. At the Slate Roof 
House, which we used for two years as our town 
residence, my little brother was born, whom we 
named John. Often he is called "John the Amer- 
ican," since he was the first child of the Penn 
family born in America. 

But our real home — the only place that seemed 
like home to me, anything like Worminghurst, is 
our beautiful manor at Pennsbury. We went 
there to live in the spring. It is twenty miles up 
the river. We are all fond of nature, as I said, 
and love the country life. Back of the house is 
a vast forest and only a few roads and trails have 
been cut through it. We go to and from Phila- 
delphia by a fine barge with six oarsmen. The 
ground to the river is terraced and an avenue of 

poplars shades the path to the water. Vistas are 

223 



224 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

cut through the forest trees to give views up and 
down the river. There are all sorts of trees, wal- 
nut, hawthorn, and hazel, and many kinds of 
fruit trees brought from England and some from 
Maryland. The gardens are beautiful with na- 
tive wild-flowers. 

Many say that our mansion is the most impos- 
ing residence to be found anywhere between the 
Hudson and the Potomac. It is built of brick 
imported from England. Its main walls are 
eighteen inches thick. We have stables for twelve 
horses, and the mansion and its furnishings are 
said to have cost father about seven thousand, 
eight hundred pounds. I like the place very much 
but do not care to be here in rural seclusion all the 
time, so I go to town as frequently as I can, spend- 
ing some time with my friends, the Shippens, the 
Logans, and the Markhams. I am past twenty 
now, and perhaps not so demure as a Quaker 
maiden ought to be, for somehow I love life and 
all the gay doings of the world. I am having a 
pleasant time leading about one of my devoted 
swains named William Masters, who is always at 
my heels making love to me whether I am in the 
city or at the Manor, but fie ! I will never marry 
him. 



NEW DAYS AND NEW WAYS 225 

We also ride a great deal on horseback. We 
have three side-saddles and two pillions. Father 
has a fine colt called Tamerlane, brought from 
England, and sired by the famous British stallion 
Godolphin. Father makes long circuits on horse- 
back, sometimes thirty or forty miles, and he has 
made one long expedition to the Susquehanna. 
He also rides all around Philadelphia looking at 
his manors or tracts which the surveyors are mark- 
ing out. One day he was riding to the meeting 
house at Haverford and overtook a little bare- 
footed girl named Rebecca Wood. He took her 
up behind him on the horse and the little girl was 
so pleased to ride with him to meeting. It must 
have made a pretty picture — the tiny maiden with 
her bare legs dangling against the horse's side and 
the Governor with his long coat and knee breeches. 
We are very fond of attending fairs and Indian 
dances, which they call "canticoes." Once father 
gave the chiefs a grand feast here at Pennsbury 
at a table spread for them in the avenue and a 
hundred turkeys were cooked for them besides 
venison and other things. Our cook, Ann Nichols, 
is a treasure and my father sometimes says — "The 
book of cookery has outgrown the Bible and I fear 
is read oftener — to be sure it is of more use." 



226 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

I fear father is sarcastic at times, for he also said : 
"The sauce is now prepared before the meat. 
Twelve pennyworth of flesh with five shillings of 
cookery may happen to make a fashionable dish. 
Plain beef or mutton is become dull food; but by 
the time its natural relish is lost in the crowd of 
cook's ingredients and the meat sufficiently dis- 
guised from the eaters, it passes under a French 
name for a rare dish." But in reality father has 
no dislike to the temperate pleasures of the table. 
I remember he wrote recently to his steward — 
"Pray send us some two or three smoked haunches 
of venison and pork — get them from the Swedes; 
also some smoked shads and beefs," and he added 
the postscript, "The old priest at Philadelphia has 
rare shads." Father's cellars are well stocked 
with canary, claret, sack, and madeira, besides a 
plentiful supply of ale and cider. 

Here at Pennsbury Manor, father's bed is cov- 
ered with a quilt of white Holland which I quilted 
in green silk, and he is very fond of it. 

James Logan sent up from Philadelphia yes- 
terday at father's request a great stew pan and 
cover, and a little soup dish, and two or three 
pounds of coffee, and three pounds of wick ready 
for candles, and also some great green candles and 



NEW DAYS AND NEW WAYS 227 

candle-sticks and pewter and earthen basins, mops, 
a looking-glass, a piece of dried beef, and a firkin 
or two of good butter. 

Father rides a large white horse and has a coach 
with a black man to drive it. Then there is that 
rattling leathern conveniency called a sedan-chair 
for mother and me. 

Father does love his barge on the river and goes 
out in it, even against wind and tide, for he says, 
*'What does it matter'? I have been sailing all 
my life against wind and tide." 

The Indians come as friends and neighbors and 
father gets on very happily with them, sitting in 
an oak arm chair in the great hall to receive them, 
and to give them presents. Sometimes they make 
a fire out of doors and sit about it in a ring, sing- 
ing very melodious hymns, beating the ground be- 
tween the verses with short sticks, and dancing 
very pleasantly. They always smoke the pipe of 
peace on these occasions, and they must note with 
some surprise that father is not a smoker as so 
many of the white men are, although he is courte- 
ous enough sometimes to take one draw through 
the proffered pipe as a part of their ceremony. 
They note most of all that he is always unarmed 
and that none of the Friends carry any weapons. 



228 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

We keep open house at Pennsbury and have 
many visitors. I remember the names of some 
of the Indians who have come in paint and feath- 
ers, such as Connoodaghtoh, king of the Susque- 
hannas; Wopaththa, king of the Shawanese; Wee- 
win jough, king of the Ganawese; and Ahookas- 
song, brother of the emperor of the Five Nations ; 
and many other humbler braves. 

But our best Indian friend of all is Tamenend, 
or Taminent, chief of the Delawares, while some 
of the other Indian tribes are the Lenni Lenape 
and the Mingoes. 

We have fine shopping in Philadelphia and we 
go about from place to place in our sedan chair. 
So in this pleasant life in the town and in the 
country we have passed two years. My father 
seems to enjoy everything to the utmost, but for 
myself at times I tire of it and long for London. 

And now come evil news from England. We 
hear that the proprietary colonies are to be taken 
and vested in the crown. Father is greatly trou- 
bled by this disquieting information. So serious 
seems the situation that he feels that if he shall 
save his colony, he must go back to England and 
present his case and appeal in person to King 
William and Queen Mary. I think the rest of 



NEW DAYS AND NEW WAYS 229 

us are secretly delighted at this prospect of going 
back to England. 



Father has now told us to-day that he is going 
back to England at once. His presence there, he 
thinks, is absolutely needed. He hopes to return 
to Pennsylvania within the year and meantime, 
he expects that mother and I and the rest of the 
family will remain at Pennsbury during his ab- 
sence; but we are all up in arms against it and 
I think we shall go with him. Last night he wrote 
a letter to James Logan at Philadelphia and I 
happened to see it on his desk, in which he said: 
''I cannot prevail on my wife to stay, still less 
Tishe. I know not what to do. Samuel Car- 
pentar seemed to excuse her in it. They will add 
greatly to the expense, more of living in London 
than of the passage, but they will not be denied." 
It looks as if he would yield and take us, and we 
are determined on it, for we know not how long 
he will be gone, if he goes alone, and we are not 
going to be left in this country without him. Be- 
sides, we will be glad to have a glimpse again of 
old London and the gentlefolk of England. 



230 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

We are going and have made our farewells. 
The parting with our dear Indians was the most 
touching for as soon as it was learned by them 
that Onas (as they call him) was about to depart 
for a time, the Indians came from all parts of the 
country to take leave of him. Somehow they 
seem to have a presentiment that they shall never 
see his face again. My father introduced them 
again to his council and they made solemn prom- 
ises to them of peace and amity which the mem- 
bers of the council reaffirmed and pledged to fol- 
low out. He gave them parting gifts which they 
took in sorrow. Surely these people of the forest 
believe in him and he has certainly won their love. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE PATHOS AND GLORY OF THE DREAM 

WHEN we arrived in England everything 
was changed, King William was dying, 
and soon another sovereign. Queen Anne, was on 
the throne. But she was a real friend to father 
and through her good will the bill of annexation 
was dropped and father's province was saved. 

When Queen Anne began her reign, she pro- 
claimed that she would maintain religious toler- 
ation, and the Friends voted an address of grati- 
tude which father was requested to present. Her 
response was — "Mr. Penn, I am so well pleased 
that what I have said is to your satisfaction, that 
you and your friends may be assured of my pro- 
tection, and I sincerely hope for your welfare 
and happiness." 

To-day I have promised to marry William 

Aubrey, and what do you think, that silly William 

Masters has followed me all the way to England 

231 



232 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

and is making a great fuss, claiming that I prom- 
ised to marry him. And the Penningtons seem 
to side with him. Strange how foolish some peo- 
ple can be. 

I am to marry William Aubrey at Worming- 
hurst next week, and all the family will be present. 

We live pleasantly in London for a while. 
We are now a good sized family. There is father 
and his wife and three children, my husband Wil- 
liam Aubrey and myself, and my brother William 
and his wife and a boy who is William the third. 

Father is thus a grandfather, so that he now says 
in a jocular way, "We are now William major, 
minor, and minimus. I bless the Lord my grand- 
children are pretty well — Johnny lively. Tommy 
a large lovely child, and my grandson Springett a 
mere Saracen, his sister a beauty." 

And with this mention of my brother William, 
I must confess a new sorrow for my father. My 
brother William, who is now my father's heir, has 
fallen into bad habits and brought great shame 
upon us all. My father deals very tenderly with 
him, using every means for his reformation, but 
all in vain. He goes from bad to worse and al- 
most breaks my father's heart. 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 233 

He is a handsome and generous young man, but 
is disposed to be extravagant, and, as I think, far 
too convivial. He is giving father so much 
trouble by his waywardness. He is certainly a 
Friend only in name and scarcely worthy of that, 
for I doubt whether he follows the Inward Light 
at all. Father has more than once said that Wil- 
liam is one of his greatest afflictions, both for his 
own soul's sake and for his family's sake. 

Father dictated to me a letter for James Logan 
yesterday from which I copy one or two items. 
He said: "I never was so low and so reduced, 
for Ireland, once my best income, now has hardly 
any money. England is severe to her, and she 
has lost trade. She is at England's mercy for 
prices (save butter and meat which we send to 
Flanders and the West Indies) so that we must 
go and eat out half our rents or we cannot enjoy 
them. 

"But oh ! That we had a fur trade instead of 
tobacco, and that you might do all that is possible 
to muster furs and skins for me. Had I but two 
or three chests of them, I could sell them for al- 
most what I wish — 16, aye, 20 shillings a skin at 
this juncture. 

"I have sent some hats, one for Griffith Owen, 



234 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

and the other intended for Edward Shippen, which 
thou mayst take with this just excuse, that the 
brim being too narrow for his age and height, I 
intend him one with a larger brim. For as soon 
as I saw it, I told the friend who made it, I thought 
it handsome, though I pinch here to be sure. If 
my son sends hounds as he has provided, two or 
three couple of choice ones for deer, foxes, and 
wolves, pray let great care be taken of them." 

This James Logan, to whom father wrote, be- 
lieves in self-defense when it is necessary to pro- 
tect life and property. Many of the Friends, 
indeed most of them, do not hold with him; but 
from what I hear there are also other good 
Friends who do not believe in war, and yet will 
use force to defend their rights and the lives of 
their loved ones. And I think that they are right. 

Still another sorrow comes. My father's stew- 
ard, Philip Ford, a reputable Friend and seem- 
ingly an excellent manager, died suddenly, and to 
my father's dismay the account books that he left 
showed no balance in my father's favor, but in- 
stead an enormous debt. His widow immediately 
brought claim for the sum of fourteen thousand 
pounds. It could not be true. The books were 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 235 

examined carefully and it was discovered that 
Philip Ford had been making false accounts and 
robbing the estate for years. My fathier had 
trusted him too fully and had taken his account 
for granted, even giving him papers to cover cer- 
tain indebtedness that the steward said must be 
met. The estate has been charged with large 
amounts that had never been received, and every- 
thing had been made out in favor of Philip Ford. 
So carefully had the deceiver's steps been covered 
that what we knew was true could not be fully 
proved. The widow is persistent and malignant. 
Father was arrested for the debt, for he could not 
and would not pay such an enormous sum and he 
was thrust into the debtors' prison at the Old 
Bailey in the Fleet. Strangely enough the place 
where they arrested him was at the same meeting 
in Grace Church Street, or as Londoners call it, 
Gracious Street, where he had been arrested for 
preaching thirty-seven years before. It must 
have brought vividly to him those olden times and 
his struggles for liberty and justice. 

I cannot get away from thoughts of this un- 
pleasant business. This Philip Ford was his 
business manager for his estate in England and 



236 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Ireland. Father realized that the revenues were 
becoming less and less, but Ford explained that 
rents had fallen off and that the land was im- 
poverished. Father had such confidence in his 
agent's honesty that his accounts went without ex- 
amination and often reports were not so much as 
opened. This agent also induced father to sign 
certain papers to cover certain debts that had 
seemed to accumulate. When Philip Ford died 
and the widow of Ford claimed everything that 
stood in my father's name and even his Pennsyl- 
vania estates, then the iniquitous business was re- 
vealed. 

Father had thought everything of Philip Ford, 
and had often said that he deserved our fullest 
gratitude for he had looked out for our interest, 
even to the neglecting of his own. It was an 
amazing surprise to him when the disclosures came 
of his friend's deceitfulness and theft. 

I go to see father often in the Old Bailey. 
He is cheery and I hope will bear it well. 'Tis 
thought his going to prison will bring them to 
terms. But I know not. They appear so cold 
and hardened. Father's lodgings are good and 
he lives comfortably enough for the circumstances. 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 237 

He has the freedom of the garden, and all in 
charge are kind to him. 

To-morrow father is to be released from the 
debtors' prison in the Fleet, where he has laid for 
nine months and eleven days. A subscription of 
about seven thousand five hundred pounds has 
been raised in England and in Pennsylvania, 
which Philip Ford's widow has agreed to accept 
in full of all claims. We are so glad to have 
father out of his confinement, for during the last 
three months his health has begun to fail most no- 
ticeably. For days at a time he has been de- 
spondent, brooding over the wrongs that had been 
done him. He could not seem to understand how 
such a friend as Philip Ford, whom he trusted so 
implicitly and who was so devout in religious pro- 
fessions, could be so deceitful and unprincipled. 
And above all he felt keenly what a shame the 
whole matter cast upon the Society of Friends. 
We tried to comfort him, but often it was of little 
use. We could not take his mind from his trou- 
ble. I think that when he gets away from the 
prison and comes into the country the change of 
scene will do him good. 



238 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

Since I last wrote in this journal, we have 
brought father from the Fleet prison and he is now 
at home with us at Brentford. He was quite ill 
and barely able to endure the journey, although 
it was only nine miles. He has now been pros- 
trated for several weeks with a dropsical gout, 
with swelling of the lower legs and feet, much 
lassitude, and feebleness of mind at times as well 
as of body. 

The affairs in Pennsylvania are also troubled 
and discouraging, and he utters the pathetic la- 
ment — "O, Pennsylvania, what hast thou cost 
me ! Above thirty thousand pounds more than I 
ever got, two hazardous and most fatiguing voy- 
ages, my straits and slavery here, and my child's 
soul almost." He meant my brother William 
when he referred to the loss of his child's soul, for 
he felt that this disgrace had come through his 
neglect of his child in order to serve-Pennsylvania. 
His colony also had never brought any wealth to 
him, but was a constant drain upon his resources 
and now in his old age he was left almost destitute. 

I cannot write down all the sorrows that have 
come to him. He seems to me in his trouble like 
that King Lear of whom I have read in Shake- 
speare's plays. And yet, as I look at him, I 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 239 

believe the more he is pressed down the more he 
rises. The Lord has given him a wonderful 
spirit. 

We have taken him to a country place at Rus- 
combe. Here he has just written a final fatherly 
appeal to his colony. He tells them that the 
Queen is willing to buy his colony and annex it to 
her crown. In spite of their ill return, he had 
been faithful to his promises. He put it to them 
as men and Christians whether they had used him 
fairly. While they have grown rich, he has be- 
come poor; while they have acquired power, he 
has lost it; while they enjoy through his toil and 
forethought much wealth, influence, and freedom, 
he had been reduced to poverty and prison. This 
letter brought from the province a kindly and sym- 
pathetic answer and the prospect of better things 
are bright. 

Yesterday, on my father's dictation, I wrote a 
letter for him to the Provincial Council in Phila- 
delphia, from which I copy here the last sentences 
as they seem to me beautiful and yet somewhat 
pathetic : "I purpose to see you if God gives me 
life, this fall, but I grow old and infirm, yet would 
gladly see you once more, before I die, and my 



240 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

young sons and daughter also, settled upon good 
tracts of land for them and theirs after them, to 
clear and settle upon, as Jacob's sons did. I close 
when I tell you that I desire fervent prayers to 
the Lord for continuing my life that I may see 
Pennsylvania once more before I die." 

Early in 1712, father received the first of three 
shocks of paralysis, which severely weakened his 
body and mind. After his third attack, it seemed 
as if he was in a dying condition, but he lingered 
on for some years. At times he grew much 
stronger, and walked well. 

The last words that father ever wrote for pub- 
lication were these in a preface to John Bank's 
Journal. He dictated it, as his custom was, walk- 
ing to and fro, with his cane in his hand thumping 
the floor to mark the emphasis. These were the 
last words : "Now, reader, before I take leave of 
thee, let me advise thee to hold thy religion in the 
spirit, whether thou prayest, praisest, or minis- 
terest to others, which, that all God's people may 
do, is, and hath long been the earnest desire and 
fervent supplication of theirs and thy faithful 
friend in the Lord Jesus Christ, W. Penn." 

The very last words that father ever wrote with 
his hand was a postscript scarcely legible in parts 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 241 

which he tried to add to a business letter that had 
been written for him. These are the words as 
nearly as we can read them: "Farewell! And 
pursue former exact orders — thou wilt — oblige 
thy real — friend. My love to — dear friends." 

These last years of father's life show a gradual 
weakening of his body but a beautiful serenity of 
mind. Sometimes he goes to meeting where often 
he speaks briefly, but with sound and savory ex- 
pression. He is pleased to see his friends ; he de- 
lights in the company of his wife, children, and 
grandchildren; and he loves his garden with its 
flowers and fruits. Thus he lives surrounded by 
the affection of his family, the sympathy and re- 
spect of his neighbors, and the approval of his 
God. 

During these last years his mind seems to be 
in an innocent state, his memory is almost entirely 
lost and the use of his understanding suspended. 
Yet he still has a good sense of the truth, and 
sometimes speaks very clear sentences concerning 
the goodness of God. I think that this is a sort 
of sequestration of him from all these concerns of 
his life which have so much oppressed him. It is 
all of God's mercy that he might have rest and not 
be oppressed thereby to the end. 



242 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

But he never fears death. I take great conso- 
lation from his own words in his volume on ''Some 
Fruits of Solitude," where he says: "He who 
lives to live forever, never fears dying. Nor can 
the means be terrible to him who heartily believes 
the end. For though death be a dark passage, it 
leads to immortality; and that is recompense 
enough for suffering of it. And this is the com- 
fort for the good, that the grave cannot hold them 
and that they live as soon as they die." 

It is a pleasant but pathetic picture in those last 
days. He is weak and feeble but his bodily 
health is fairly good, his temper serene and he has 
lost all concern for worldly affairs and ceased to 
worry about them. When the weather is bright 
and sunny he sometimes takes his little grandchil- 
dren out into the fields to gather flowers and to 
watch them chase the butterflies. He seems again 
to have the heart of a little child, never before has 
he looked so happy. He does not speak very 
much, but a constant smile is on his face. His 
memory fades more and more, but the sweetness 
and beauty of his character seems to shine out like 
a radiance around him. 

On this beautiful summer morning in the early 
watches between two and three o'clock, on the 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 243 

3rd of seventh month, 1718/ he fell gently asleep 
for the last time on earth and awoke in the heav- 
enly land. We buried him at Jordan's under the 
shadow of the meeting house we love, there at the 
side of his dear young wife, my mother Guli, and 
there near his dearly beloved son Springett. A 
great multitude of Friends and Christians of other 
names from all parts of the country came to his 
burial and followed in a sad procession from Rus- 
combe to the quiet burial ground at Jordans. At 
his grave they all stood in silence for a time, then 
one after the other of his old and intimate friends 
spake a few loving words of testimony and fare- 
well. 

Thus died a dreamer of dreams — in his seventy- 
fourth year — the full three score and ten, and even 
more. I think that all who knew him well will 
say that he was a tender, human, noble-hearted 
man, full of kindness and liberality, full of ten- 
derness and love, full of the gospel of the sweet- 
ness of Christ. Sometimes I think, as I look back 
over his life, that it was a very strange and won- 
derful one, so tumultuous and troubled were those 
seventy years, and yet withal so noble and victori- 

iThis date was originally written fifth month, that is, July, 
in the old style. — Editor. 



244 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

ous. It reminds me of those classic tales that I 
have read — for his life was an Iliad of sorrows 
and yet an Odyssey of adventures and discoveries 
in the cause of liberty and truth. I hear much 
of the excellent Pilgrims of Plymouth, but did 
not father lead an equally heroic company into this 
new world, and was not surely the Welcome a ship 
of faith as much as the Mayflower? I love to 
read dear mother's diary from the beginning. I 
am glad that it has come into my heart to com- 
plete the story of father's life, and as I read of his 
dealings with kings and princes, I hold him as 
princely in thought and deed as any of them, yea, 
as royal in nature and as regal in soul. Mother 
has once compared him with our leader and 
prophet, the devout George Fox. To me he seems 
more like the lawgiver and servant of God, Moses, 
leading the hosts of the oppressed from the bond- 
age of Egypt out into the Promised Land. But 
most of all, just as dear mother in the very begin- 
ning of her journal pictures the blind Puritan 
poet, John Milton, and my father as they met to- 
gether at the Grange at Chalfont, so now as life 
ends, I see the two grand old men together once 
more. Who shall say that my dear father is not 
as wonderful as the other*? Father lived as great 



THE GLORY OF THE DREAM 245 

a poem as John Milton wrote. Father lost a 
Paradise and regained one. His own great epic 
was his life, his noblest sonnet his City of Broth- 
erly Love. He also became blind — blind to all 
but friendship, liberty, truth, and God, and he also 
was glorious victor at the end. Surely he has en- 
riched life as much as the mighty Milton has en- 
riched literature. 

And now he is gone. He loved much — most of 
all I think he loved his dear Guli, his gentle son 
Springett, and his beloved city of Philadelphia. 
Some day I think the people of that city will love 
and honor him most of all, for it was the city of his 
heart, and his words concerning it which I often 
repeat I may use once more as a benediction to 
close this fragmentary journal— "And thou, Phil- 
adelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, 
named before thou wert born — what love, what 
care, what service, and what travail, has there been 
to bring thee forth and preserve thee from such as 
would abuse and defile thee! My soul prays to 
God for thee, that thou mayest stand in the day of 
trial, that thy children may be blessed by the 
Lord, and thy people saved by his power !" 



POSTSCRIPT 

To THE Gentle Reader: 

Thus ends this singular and remarkable narra- 
tive, now first presented to the public. Has it 
not given a new view of a career which is cer- 
tainly picturesque, dramatic, and full of deep 
human interest? Has it not also given a fresh 
revelation of the beautiful and lovable character 
of Gulielma Maria Springett? 

I have been somewhat interested, as others may 
be, in tracing the parallels and verifications of the 
facts and incidents given in this narrative by a 
careful reference to various pamphlets, letters, 
and sundry volumes that are available in the col- 
lections of the Pennsylvania Historical Society in 
Philadelphia, and the Friends' records at Devon- 
shire House, London. The journal account of 
the trip through Holland and Germany, and the 
visit to the Princess Elizabeth seem to agree sub- 
stantially with the account that William Penn 
gives much more fully in his journal printed some 

years after the event. The story of the trial at 

246 



POSTSCRIPT 247 

the Old Bailey, as here briefly given, is confirmed 
by the longer version that Penn himself wrote. 
Some incidents of his early life, the Oxford days 
and the Paris days, are verified by the brief por- 
tions of his autobiography which we possess. 
Pepys' diary also furnishes confirmation of further 
facts. 

The details of his marriage place and rites, so 
long an obscure chapter, are now confirmed by the 
researches and documents recently discovered by 
W. H. Summers of London. Other incidents are 
also given in the beautiful memoirs of Lady 
Springett, written for her grandson Springett. 
Penn's account of the Indians as here given also 
agrees substantially with the fuller and more for- 
mal report which he made to the Royal Society. 
The story of the voyage of the Welcome^ as here 
given, is confirmed by the fragments of the log of 
the voyage kept by Thomas Pearson. It is most 
regrettable that this interesting record has not been 
preserved in its entirety. Much light is thrown 
on certain points by letters and documents of the 
Devonshire House collection. Other points are 
verified by the full memoir of Admiral Sir Wm. 
Penn by Granville Penn. The references to John 
Milton and his life at Chalfont are singularly veri- 



248 A DREAMER OF DREAMS 

fied by the accounts in Thomas Ellwood's memoir, 
and also by certain incidents told in the volume on 
"The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell," 
which is practically of the same period. The ac- 
count of the last days of Penn is confirmed by the 
letters of the Quaker historian, Thomas Story. I 
notice that most modern historians, as well as the 
older ones, use these same materials freely, often 
repeating the same stories from practically the 
same sources, without much variation. The value 
of this personal narrative is that, although often 
from similar sources evidently — contemporary let- 
ters, often — yet it puts the facts and incidents of 
this remarkable life in a new light, and gives it all 
a very human and personal interest. 

I may also add concerning the places mentioned 
in this narrative that Chalfont and Jordan's still 
exist as places of interesting pilgrimage. King's 
Farm, Chorley Wood, may still be visited. The 
house dates from the fifteenth century. The room 
where the marriage took place shows an interesting 
interior. Basing House, at Rickmans worth, is 
still standing, but somewhat changed. The Shan- 
gerry Estate and castle may be found to-day near 
Cork, but the castle is a heap of ruins. I saw a 
few years ago Admiral Penn's tablet and armor 



POSTSCRIPT 249 

in the beautiful St. Mary Redcliffe's Church at 
Bristol. But Pennsbury Manor had fallen into 
decay before the Revolution; and Worminghurst 
— the idyllic home long since torn down by Squire 
Butler — has become merely a broad farm over- 
looking the south downs of Sussex and to-day a 
part of the domains of the Duke of Norfolk. 

As a final word, may I express here the earnest 
hope that a perusal of this narrative may lead to 
fuller reading in the spiritual history of this peo- 
ple called Quakers. I believe they have a mes- 
sage for this modern world. 

O. H. 



THE END 



